NAS104 Raid decision? Xraid vs Raid 10 etc #24296869

offbyone wrote:
I have limited experience, but I was under the impression that if you had an even number of disks that Raid 10 was the way to go in terms of a combination of performance and data protection.

With 4x3TB drives and RAID-10, you'd have a 6 TB volume (~5.4 TiB). With RAID-5/X-RAID you'd have a 9 TB volume (~8.1 TiB).

The choice is yours of course, the RN104 supports RAID-10. But in my view you are better off with RAID-5, RAID-6, or two volumes of RAID-1.
-RAID-5 offers the most space with protection against a single drive failure.
-RAID-6 offers protection against any combination of two drive failures, but 2/3 the space of RAID-5 (in your situation).
-RAID-1 offers protection against most (not all) combinations of two drive failures, and the simplest recovery. It also provides 6 TB of total storage (in two volumes in your situation).

Most users here would prefer the larger volume of RAID-5/XRAID. If your goal is improve performance, buying an RN300 or RN500 is a better way to go. AN RN500 will max out a gigabit ethernet network even in RAID-5 (and an RN300 is very close to doing the same). RAID-10 makes more sense if you have 10 gig ethernet and a higher end NAS than the one you purchased (for instance the RN700 series).