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I think sometimes a combination of these techniques is better than any one alone. I recently custom-built a Windows Home Server, and what I did was use a hardware RAID card to link two 1TB drives in a RAID 1 array, and then installed the OS itself onto the array. It sees just a single 1TB volume (931GB in binary calculation), on which is setup its 20GB OS partition, and a 911GB partition for the data storage shares.

While Microsoft does not support (and strongly discourages use of) hardware RAID with WHS, I elected to use this method, because of the fact that hardware-based RAID is far more efficient than a software-based file system level RAID. Also, the OS partition will also be duplicated, so if one drive fails, the system will keep right on running off the other drive. Chances of both drives failing simultaneously is slim to none, unless significant physical damage to the device occurs.

Now if I even want to add more storage, I will install another RAID card and build another RAID 1 array, which WHS will see as a single volume, and then I will let WHS's Drive Extender feature take over and manage that volume for me. This is the combination method I spoke of earlier. Since the Drive Extender itself will not be set to duplicate files on its own (since that job is handled by the more efficient hardware-based RAID), performance will not be an issue. This will effectively become a RAID 10 configuration, with the RAID 1 being hardware-based, and the RAID 0 striping function being handled by WHS with minimal performance impact. It's too bad Microsoft doesn't support hardware RAID, as OEMs could sell this configuration as an option at a higher cost, for people who want better protection, but I'm guessing that without WHS being able to manage the hardware RAID on its own, supporting such a configuration would be a nightmare. Oh well, at least Microsoft didn't remove the ability to load RAID card drivers during the installation phase, so that us geeks can build it however we want. =)

WARNING: RAID 5 does not offer as much safety as you think given the growing capacity of hard drives and the expected read/write failure rates. If you had RAID 5 with 2TB drives for instance, you could still have your server go down when only one drive fails!

In my opinion small business mostly used RAID1 and RAID10 (or 1+). RAID5 doesn't used as well in any normally IT company. Because it terrible unsafe.

By the way, RAID0 can't be recovered. Even if you pay a lot of money you will be have a puzzle of some files. But nothing else.

ivorycruncher, on 16 April 2010 - 12:57 PM, said:

I see your post may be a couple of years old but dont count on @ "Chances of both drives failing simultaneously is slim to none, unless significant physical damage to the device occurs"

A former IT colleague of mine had many years of programming/app development stored on a Raid1 mirror and both drives started the dreaded Click of death at the same time - and he didnt act fast enough or have another backup and had to pay some big bucks for data recovery services...There was no physical damage you speak of...While in most cases you may be right about both drives failing at the same time - it can/will happen...But he learned a hard lesson to have at least a secondary backup option like carbonite or mozy or something.

Also I have worked on some consumer level home business raid mirrored systems and when 1 drive failed - the machine may have worked but it was so slow it was basically unusable - so to say a system will always keep on running on just 1 drive, until you get it replaced/rebuilt array may be accurate, but the user will be complaining and blowing up your phone/email. Your data/OS may be safe but I wouldn't count on it being stable and i wouldn't want to use it.