RAID 1 or 5...any advice

[Trolle]

I am a totally newbie when it comes to RAID and NAS. I bought a Netgear box since my Lacie is on its last legs.

The Netgear came with 3 disks (1 TB each). I have a 250 GB HDD on my Macbook Pro and intend to run Time Machine and store my iTunes library on the external.

I understand the differences between RAID 1 and 5, I just have not been able to read the disadvantages or one or the other (e.g. performance). I intend to use the Netgear wirelessly.

I am thinking to use 1 TB for storage and the other 2 disks as copies.

I did consider that in the future I could buy another 1 TB disk for a total of 4 TB. 2 for storage and 2 for backup.

 

[McBie]

Disadvantages of RAID 1 compared to RAID 5 is the price.
With RAID 1 you need more physical disks that with RAID 5 to get a specific amount of disk space.

RAID 5 is a lot slower than RAID 1 with large ' write ' operations.

In reality, I see only the cost as a disadvantage of RAID 1.

Cheers ...

 

[Trolle]

Thanks. Makes more sense now.

Apparently, Netgear has a proprietary RAID option called X RAID...just went with that option for now.