[K12OSN] SATA vs SCSI

[Jim Kronebusch]

> Yes -- BUT, something I never knew about RAID5:
> 
> You lose the capacity of (1) of the biggest drives in your array.  So 
> for a 3 drive setup, you lose 1/3rd of your space, BUT if you get a 
> RAID5 array of 8 drives, you still get 7/8ths of your space...
> 
> So depending on the desired result, you can buy drives (and 
> RAID cards) 
> appropriately.

You got it.  Because it doesn't just set one whole drive aside.  It
actually takes a portion of every drive in the array to store bits of
information for every other drive in the array, that way if one fails
they all have pieces of information from the failed drive and disperse
that information among themselves.  I usually try to run a 4 drive
minimum so I can take the most advantage of space.  But that is of
course personal preference.  This new SATA machine I built has 5 200GB
drives in RAID 5 and I get 800GB of storage for /home.

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