I've got a server at home running Windows 2003 Server. I use the server to house my media collection and backups from other PCs on my LAN. The server has 4 1TB drives along with a smaller system disk where the OS resides.
I'm sick of having my media and files scattered around 4 disks and I want a single volume for it instead. Having some redundancy as well is a plus. So I thought RAID 5 would be the way to go.
I believe I can use the RAID 5 functionality built into Win 2k3 server, but I'm concerned about it's reliability/performance. Write speeds are not that important to me, read speeds are much more important. I've got a Gigabit LAN and I frequently stream high definition media from the server. What kind of performance can I expect? The server has a Core 2 Duo E6800 CPU @ 2.66Ghz and 4GB of RAM.
Then it's the reliability, as a RAID 5 solution it should provide data redundancy, but what if my OS disk fails and I need to reinstall Windows, being software based, will my RAID 5 array still be functional with a new installation of Windows?
Any other general thoughts/recommendations? At first I was looking into getting a cheap RAID controller card, such as the HighPoint 2300/2310 but if I can get away with a software only solution which works adequately, I'd do that. Would I be much better off with a card like the HighPoint ?