Internal HD for RAID setup

[ShermDog]

I am planning on adding 2-3 additional internal HD's to my Powermac G5 using the SwiftData 200 (available at Transintl.com). Can anyone give me input as to which of the following two setups is best? I plan on using the RAID for DV editing.

1. Two Maxtor 300GB HD's (7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, model 6B300S0)

--OR--

2. Three Maxtor 250GB HD's (7200 RPM, 16MB buffer, model 6B250S0)

All things being equal (e.g., SATA RAID card, cables, etc.), which of the two configurations would provide the best and/or most reliable performance? Also, should I be concerned with the additional heat generated by 3 250GB HD's versus two 300GB HD's?

Finally, since HD's get slower as you start to use the inner tracks, would I experience a slow-down quicker with the 250GB HD's versus the 300GB HD's?

 

[RGunner]

Just curious and a suggestion

Why not go with a better solution such as the Firmtek Raid box (the controller in the G5 is not the best).

Also, the drive models are not the 'most' current Maxtors. They would be the 7B series for absolute max performance.

 

[daveL]

RAID performance is all about the number of spindles, so your three drive config is going to be faster, albeit more prone to failure, since a single failure out of 3 drives will bring you down (I'm assuming your striping, since you're asking about performance). Software RAID, i.e. OS X RAID, will never be as fast as RAID with a dedicated HW controller. If you are worried about poor performance on the interior tracks, you can always partition each drive into an outer partition and and inner partition and confine your performance filesystem to the outer partition. Obviously, your performance partition will not be as large as it would have been using the full disk. Make sure all drives are identical and partitioned the same.

HTH