RAID Building Help?!!! -- 5 vs. 10 vs. 01? hardware vs. software?etc...

Ok, I've googled this to death, learned as much relevant, and irrelevant, info about RAIDs as my brain can handle, and yet I still do not have some of the answers I need. I need to actually start editing this week, so HELP!

Details:
I have MacPro 2.66, 5gb ram
Am editing a documentary of at least 100 hrs, plus some other small projects. Mostly HDV but you never know if I'll get some P2 cards or HD footage at some pt.

I ordered:
-5x 1TB HItachi Enterprise/Ultrastar SATA drives
-a Firmtek SeriTek 5 bay Enclosure
-a Highpoint Rocketraid 2314 PCI-e 4 ext eSATAII/4SATA HD (at OWC's recommendation)
I decided to go the DIY route and build my own RAID (cause I'm cheap/broke...and like to think I can do it myself

I did extensive Stage 1 research and decided to do either a RAID 5 or 0+1.
OWC and some others seemed to think 5 was more the standard so I was leaning that way. But I read some interesting stuff that says Raid5 is not so reliable and not so fast -- RAID Article

Some recommendation for raid 5+0 but not much info.

Then many recommend 0+1 (even over 1+0). Better for redundancy (conflicting info about speed). Though of course I'll be down to 2TB plus a spare 1TB for excess or hot-swappable spare (vs. the 4TB if I do a Raid 5).

This review of my controller card has some interesting tests of RAID 5 and 10, but with different drive numbers. Highpoint review

And most of this info is geared toward servers or PC applications. No mention of read/write speeds, preferred configurations, or other needs for Video and editing.

I'm also very confused about the whole hardware vs software setup. Seem hardware was traditionally better but maybe software is fine nowadays? But don't want to risk loosing data w/a software setup.
And I bought a card, yet it says to use disk utility or another program to set it up. So is that hardware or software.

And then vague references to striping it in various size blocks but no details. I'm soooo confused!

so I guess my questions are:

-Which RAID is best for Editing (w/4 to 5 drives)? Pros and Cons? Any good links?

-Hardware vs software setup/controller?

-Are there various options/preferences for striping, in regards to block sizes...or something?

-Any other useful info/links that can help me get this right?

Huge Thanks!

Lara

I don't get that article about NO RAID 5!!!! Raid 5 is a safe way to store data on a specific set of drives. IE: 3 or more drives use a portion of the total volume to store parity codes when being written to. All those other RAID 3, 6 etc are just variants on RAID 5. Either the parity gets stored on the same volume as the data or on another dedicated drive. Either way, when one drive fails, the entire RAID set suffers somehow.

I would like to suggest another possible RAID setup that would let you grow into the other's in the future.
See this AMUG article:
[www.amug.org]

The SATA card you are looking at requires a single cable per drive in the Firmtek box. While that is not a bad thing, the setup is arduious, The box in the AMUG article uses another Highpoint card that can be used with up to 8 drives. 4 in the lower bay and 4 in the upper bay.
[www.hptmac.com]

What this allows is one Infiniband cable to run to the lower and one to the upper a SATA cable set in one cable.

The 8 bay/drive box also allows you to maximize future additions by having the same general RAID connections as does the Apple XServe RAID. That being, each set of four drives can run as RAID 5 and then can be ran totally as RAID 50. RAID 50 means two stripes of RAID 5.

The more stripes, in a RAID setup; the faster transfer rates you get. In essence, an 8 stripe RAID 0 will get over 550 MB/second of read transfer. A RAID 5 version of this will get you over 450 MB/sec of the same.

Another point of view for SATA RAIDS.

Hi,
Sorry for the delay. Had a computer crisis of another nature to attend to.

Thanks for your input John! And your feed back made me do more googling. Yikes!

(quick note: the Card I bought, 2314, actually supports port multiplier; 1 Enclosure per port; 20 drives total. You're right, I think the 8 bay enclosure may have been smarter, but OWC did not offer that option, and my enclosure has arrived, so too late now . Maybe later. This one will be a bit more portable in case I have to take it to the editor I'll one day hire!)

To clarify...and I still have questions...

If I understand correctly:
-so Raid 5 seems fine, but to be safe I'd really have to do a 5+0 for true backup?

-5+0 gives me a little more speed, and I only loose 2 out of 5 drives
-1+0 I loose 3 out of 5 drives (or have the one extra stand alone).

...so any reason to prefer 1+0 over 50????
anything specific to editing?

-Do I do select desired number of blocks/stripes in disk utility when setting up, or? (I still don't under stand HOW to do this)...or is it dependant on the number of drives you have?

-and for a 5 drive Raid 50 or 10, how many blocks is optimal?

Wanting to build this tonight, so any help or links are greatly appreciated!

Lara

Hey Lara-

Did you ever get all your answers? I am about to embark on a similar HDV project and am looking into RAIDs. I dont yet understand the port multiplier situation and would like to have one cable per set of 4 drives as opposed to one per drive.. I'm thinking of maybe two 4 drive raid enclosures as opposed to 1 8 bay for convenience, but maybe that is limited thinking..
I will definitely check out the links mentioned, but wanted to see if you have any new info since you started awhile ago or if your system is up and running


Thanks

Paul

Hi Paul,
Unfortunately I don't think I can be of much help at the moment. I did a ton of raid research at the time, bought the drives and 4-bay enclosure, then left town for 4 months. So for my sake as well I have to dig back into all my notes to remember how I was planning to set things up.
You CAN put 4 drives on one cable, if you buy the appropriate enclosure.
There may be benefits to 2, 4 bay drives vs 1, 8 bay. Heat generation comes immediately to mind. I did read that it significantly improves cooling to buy a 5 bay enclosure but only put 4 drives in. Another/different thought on 5 bays was to set one of the drives up as a "spare" so if one, or two, drives go down, you have immediate back up.

My biggest debate was which raid to go with. think I had settled on 5+0 for compromise of redundancy and a little speed.
...though that was 4 months ago, so many things/technology could have changed by now! (not to mention prices!)

best of luck and let me know if you find out anything new!
Lara