I have never owned or messed with any kind of RAID enclosure or RAID levels, so I have a lot of questions. I have a good bit of experience with computer hardware, and a Bachelors in Computer Science. I just would like to know what I am getting myself into before I buy the wrong stuff. Hardware I am looking at purchasing: enclosure disks x 3 My goal and idea: One of the most important aspects of this project is preventing loss of data. Here is where I am not sure what RAID level to use. I was thinking of using RAID level 5, but again I haven't ever used anything like this before, so feel free to direct me to another level. From what I understand, this would provide me with 2 Tbytes of space, and the capability to rebuild if a drive fails/dies without me losing data? Also, my laptop has an eSATA port, so from what I understand that enclosure will allow for me to plug into my laptop and access the enclosure as if it were an external hard-drive, yes? Another question, can I install an operating system onto the enclosed disks? If so, could i then boot up from the OS using the eSATA port on my laptop, and would it burn the port up(due to constant read and writes, like some usb's I've seen) or cause performance issues? Suggestions/Ideas are welcome. If you know of a better setup/cost/hardware then I would appreciate your input, I am looking to spend roughly 300-340$.
Check this video. This guy explains in less than 3 minutes which RAID setup would be best for you. He has a bit of an accent but its bearable. Since you're buying 3 hard drives and are looking for security, RAID 5 would be a good option. If you were buying 2 hard drives i would've recommended RAID 1 as it reads files faster. You'll first need to install the drives into the enclosure. Plug it into your laptop, and choose through BIOS the RAID you want to use. Here's an 8 minute tutorial from NCIX.com on how to setup your RAID. You'll be able to install your O/S through eSata with no problem. You should only do this after setting up RAID through BIOS first.
