On 19Nov2009 15:31, Kevin O'Neil <kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: | I have a question. Is it better to have multiple hard drives or will | just one be ok? Speaking as someone recovering from some data loss right now, multiple drives is better. | I have a box that can have up to 2T...should I use two 1T or 4 500Gb? That's a funny limit. Why 2TB? Or do you mean the max partition size is 2TB, courtesy of the horrible DOS partition format? People will probably recommend 4 drives in a RAID 5 configuration, but at home we've just migrated to a policy of 2 drives in RAID 1 (mirror) configuration. RAID 1 is less efficient in terms of space: RAID 5 will "waste" one drive of parity data, thus 1/4 of your drive space while RAID 1 will waste 1/2 your drive space. HOWEVER, with RAID 1 either drive is usable on its own. With RAID 5 you need at least three drives (n-1) drives. So if you have the money, I'd use RAID 1. It is simpler and in some ways more flexible. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ When you say `I wrote a program that crashed Windows', people just stare at you blankly and say `Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*'. - Linus Torvalds -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines