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What RAID system should I use?

The right choice depends on the application.
The following table summarizes the RAID levels with some of their possible uses.

RAID Level Uses
Level 0 (striping)
Any application which requires very high speed storage, but does not need Redundancy.
Photoshop temporary files are a good example.

Level 1 (mirroring)
Applications which require Redundancy with fast random writes; entry-level systems where only two Drives are available.
Small file servers are an example.

Level 4 (parity)
Applications which require Redundancy at low cost, or with high-speed reads. This is good for archival storage.
Larger file servers are an example.

Level 5 (distributed parity)
Similar to level 4, but may provide higher performance if most I/O is random and in small chunks.
Database servers are an example.
Often, it makes sense to use more than one level.
For instance, in a two-Drive system, one partition could use level 0 to offer the highest performance for temporary files; another partition could use level 1 to offer security for important data or applications.
In a three-Drive system, a partition for temporary files could use level 0, the boot Disk could use level 1, and large data files could be stored on a level 4 partition.

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