so, it sounds like my plan to use 4 bays with 4x 100gb ssd drives, stripe paired for speed and then mirrored is good speed and also data protection. these 4 are only for short term storage/working space as all work will then be copied off to esata two spaces as well, then later copied again to similar setup in another location.
so with this my optical bay will separately hold a 200gb boot drive that i can have either mirrored to a 2nd one below it or onto a 2T miscellaneous space that could be partitioned into 200gb for optional boot and the rest for music or personal junk
Theres a major snag here. The ICH is only good for ~660MB/s, which will throttle with 5x SSD's (
other thread).
To illustrate this, let's assume each SSD is capable of 250MB/s on it's own.
RAID 10 (all OS X will allow, and it's safer than 0+1), gives the performance of a 2x disk stripe set, so 500MB/s. Then the single OS/applications disk is another 250MB/s.
So for simultaneous access, you'd by trying to push 750MB/s through a pipe that can only handle 660MB/s. Doesn't work, so you're limited to the slowest link in the chain, which is the ICH's available bandwidth. This where the term throttling comes from (like trying to swallow too much food at once, and you choke on it).
Another issue is, using current MLC based SSD's for scratch space. They're not suited for high write conditions, as the cells are only good for 10,000 (or less) writes per the Flash manufacturer. This does get extended by wear leveling, but it's still not as good as current mechanical disks, and the cost/GB sucks in comparison (this has been covered in depth before, so a search would give you more information if you're interested).
That said, the new 40GB SSD's from OWC can be used if you're willing to accept the tradeoff required, which is that you'll have to replace the disks in 1 - 1.5 years (MTBR = Mean Time Between Replacement). You can use either a single disk or stripe set for this, but the single is fast enough for most users.
Place your primary data on either a 10 or RAID 5 (would require a separate hardware controller that contains an NVRAM solution to the write hole associated with parity based arrays). BTW, this is a good solution if you're a professional (I'll presume you are until stated otherwise).
Use externals for backup.
Option 1:
- Optical bay = SSD OS/applications disk
- HDD 1 - 4 = RAID 10
- 6.0Gb/s eSATA card = 1x SSD for scratch (separate enclosure and use one of the 2x ports), and a PM enclosure for backups.
Pros = less expensive due to using inexpensive hardware (no proper hardware RAID controller).
Cons = RAID 10 gives half the total capacity of the disks available to you (i.e. 4x 1TB disks = 2TB usable capacity).
Other options exist using a RAID card, but more information would be needed, such as capacity requirements (includes future expansion), budget, ....
Unfortunately, ATM, there's too little information as to how to advise using parity arrays (or other means).
do a raid 1/0 or 1+0 OR 10 as some say
basically 1/0 is you take two drives make them raid 1 then repeat this so we now have two raid 1 sets then you create a raid 0 out of these !
10 is the most common notation for a 1+0 configuration. 1/0 usually means the controller is capable of 1 or 0, not 10 (though it should be capable if it's able to handle stripe and mirror sets). But there are hardware implementations (i.e. 2x disk external enclosures that have a hardware chip that can't due to insufficient disks available).
I know its new to you and small things confused are best corrected now