CapBBeard

Hey all,

I will soon have 4 new 500GB 7200.11 drives and plan to create a RAID out of them. I have an ASUS P5B-E motherboard (ICH8R chipset).

Originally I was just going to create a single 1TB RAID 10 volume and be done with it, but I've started pondering using matrix RAID to create a 300GB RAID 0 volume for my OS/apps, and then an 850GB RAID 10 volume for my user data.

I've done a LOT of reading on the merits of each RAID type, so I'm not really after a discussion on which is better, but more about what happens in a drive failure situation.

With the single RAID 10 volume, obviously I can just rebuild the RAID 10 and off I go again.

In the case of the mixed RAID 0/10, I'll clearly need to recreate the RAID 0 volume and reinstall my OS. The question is, what ramifications does this rebuild have on the RAID 10 volume?

According to Intel, in the case of a RAID 0 OS volume and RAID 1 data volume, you need to delete the RAID 0 volume, copy data out of your RAID 1 volume, delete the RAID 1 volume, and then create the RAID 1 volume again. I'm not keen on this at all; ie, why can't the RAID 1 volume just be rebuilt?

So, my question is, if I go with the mixed RAID 0 / 10 matrix setup, and a drive fails, can I just rebuild the RAID 10 volume, or will I need to copy all my data out and more or less start from scratch?

[Side note: Yeah, I'm aware that running a RAID 10 is no substitute for a real backup, cheers :)]

Any help would be appreciated!