From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Mar 6 17:10:47 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from ux.accesscom.net (ux.accesscom.net [204.181.176.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D220737C004 for ; Mon, 6 Mar 2000 17:10:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mlistbsd@icorp.net) Received: from p301.accesscom.net(204.181.189.1) by ux(smtpd 2.1.2) with SMTP id smtp011702; Mon, 6 Mar 00 19:10:33 -0600 Message-ID: <38C45697.D736070F@icorp.net> Date: Mon, 06 Mar 2000 19:08:39 -0600 From: James Reply-To: james@icorp.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en Mime-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RAID/config questions Content-Length: 1403 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Please accept my apologies if this question has been asked a million times, but tech changes and I'm always interested in what's good. I have a FreeBSD box that has been running on a P2/300 with an Adaptec 2940uw and a 9G/Cheetah. I'm looking to upgrade the system to RAID. I assume my main choices are to go with a RAID mirror system with 2 drives, or a RAID 5 system with 3 (9G) drives. Here are my questions: 1. What is the best RAID controller/model to use? (for either setup) I've been pretty happy with Adaptec and FreeBSD's support of Adaptec controllers, so I would prefer to stay with Adaptec but don't know about their RAID offerings.. 2. Which will give me better performance? RAID or RAID5? I know RAID5 will give me more disk space, but is there any significant i/o performance cost? And generally speaking, how much of a performance degredation may I see (if any) in going from a non-raid SCSI to a RAID or RAID 5 setup? 3. I have a full-height tower case. I'm looking to add some hot-swappable drive bays. Any recommendations on the model and suppliers? I've had very good experience with Dirt Cheap Drives (www.dirtcheapdrives.com). If I switch to a swappable RAID system, I want to make sure I order all the components I need. And what about stand-alone, rack-mount drive cabinets? Are they economical? Where's the best source? Thanks for any advice you may have! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message