Raid 5 versus 3 computer backup

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Tom Metro wrote:
> Another advantage to RAID, as Rich Braun has pointed out in previous
> postings, is that it can help ease the effort to expand the capacity of
> a storage system. As he explained, you can do a rolling upgrade.

Right, indeed my first RAID setup came about as a result of my decision not to
throw out the old drive when adding a new drive.  It occurred to me that there
are two separate HDD controllers built into every motherboard, and that CPU
performance far exceeds disk performance these days.  Hence it turned out to
be literally free to simply keep the old disk in place as a redundant spare
for at least part of my filesystem(s).  This is true of RAID1 but not the
other RAID versions, which chew up more CPU.

This was sorta like the time I discovered that one could set up a dual monitor
for free:  when you buy a new monitor, simply keep the old one and put the new
one right beside it.  You get more screen real estate (but this isn't exactly
free:  old monitors eat a lot of electricity).

-rich


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