RAID 5 worth it?

[drdeutsch]

I'm about to upgrade my computer, and I was considering getting more HDs for storage - photos, videos, etc.

I'm wondering if getting four of these WD 2TB drives (WD20EARX) would be worth it in RAID 5? I'm somewhat of a RAID newbie (I used to run RAID 0 back in my youth, but haven't used it in many years), but I've been reading up on it. Apparently RAID 5 is good for backups, but it can suffer slowdowns. These are WD Green drives, which means they run slower, although they are SATA III, so I'm not quite sure what the speed tradeoffs are and whether or not it is worth it.

Any storage experts care to chime in?
(note: I live in Taiwan, so my selection of 2-3TB drives is somewhat limited. I'm partial to WD myself (plus easy to RMI in Taiwan), but if you can think of a better drive, I can search around to see if it's available and what the price difference is.

 

[Dangman]

Are you planning on using RAID 5 with Windows? If so you're gonna need a different set of hard drives as those Green drives won't work too well out of the box with RAID 5 and Windows.

Preferably, you should be looking at these drive series:
Hitachi Ultrastars
Western Digital RE
Seagate ES2

But Hitachi's regular hard drive should work as well. Possibly Samsung as well.

Also, SATA 6.0Gb/s doesn't really matter when it comes to regular hard drives.

 

[drdeutsch]

I'd be looking at using Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and onboard RAID.

Really, I'm just looking for convenient storage. I have a 1tb drive, but it's already full. What do you think the best options for me are as far as getting backup storage without the risk of losing anything?

I could use my old computer and set it up as a NAS, but I guess the problem arises once again with getting the right drives, correct?

EDIT: Just checked the price of those drives you recommended. Yikes. Looks like this something I'll have to save up for. Perhaps I'm better off just getting a 2 or 3 TB drive to expand my storage.

 

[Dangman]

Really, I'm just looking for convenient storage. I have a 1tb drive, but it's already full. What do you think the best options for me are as far as getting backup storage without the risk of losing anything?

If you want a true backup, then you should be looking at getting an external hard drive, NAS, file server, or even online storage. If you just want additional storage, just get a larger drive.

I could use my old computer and set it up as a NAS, but I guess the problem arises once again with getting the right drives, correct?

Not necessarily if you don't use Windows. If you use Linux or any non-Windows OS, just about any drive will work fine in RAID 5 with those OSes.