To "hardware" RAID 5 or software RAID 5

[Gordon Messmer]

Robin Laing wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-12-03 at 12:13 +0800, Hadders wrote:
>> RAID 6 - less used, but like 5, but handles more than a single disk failure.
> 
> Thanks for this information.  I will have to look closer at RAID 6 for
> my new file server.

Naturally, in order to provide the additional redunancy, you sacrifice 
more disk space.  In a RAID5 set, the parity is stored on the equivalent 
of the volume of one disk.  Your available space is N-1, where N is the 
size of the smallest disk used.  In RAID6, the available space is N-2. 
The additional redundancy is good if you have a large set of disks, but 
if you've got just three, it's probably overkill.  RAID5 is the best 
solution for a 3 disk set.