New Hard Drive Configuration?

[3vj3]

Right now I have two WD500's in a RAID 0 and two 640's in a RAID 0. Both are RAIDs are through Apple's software. I back up the two 500's with a 640 (since I haven't gone over 640GB yet) and I backup the two 640's with a Seagate 1.5TB.

 

Now the two 500's are approaching the 640 limit of the backup so I need to buy a new hard drive, but don't know what I should do. The two 500's are my boot drive and the two 640's are my media drive. I only have 4 SATA ports available.

 

Here are the HD's I have to play with:

 

2 x WD 500 GB

3 x WD 640 GB

1 x Seagate 1.5 TB

 

 

Option 1) Buy another Seagate 1.5.

PROS: This is more than enough room to backup the 500's and it will give me the option to RAID the 1.5's in the future.

CONS: A lot of wasted space. This isn't the best HD. Expensive.

 

 

 

Option 2) Buy another 640 and hook up all 4 into a RAID 0. Use the two 500's and 1.5TB to back this up.

PROS: A four HD RAID 0. Cheap. I can partition it so that I use 1.5TB for one partition and 1TB for the other, allowing me to utilize the full 1.5TB for backup (right now the 1.5 has about 200GB that I won't use since 640 x 2 = 1280)

CONS: Don't know how much of a speed increase I will get since I use software RAID. One drive failing.

 

 

 

Option 3) Buy more than one hard drive and do something else.

 

 

 

Option 4) Something you suggest

 

 

 

So what do you think?

[Nick14]

Buy an Intel SSD 80gb if you want preformace and not more space

[3vj3]

I don't want an SSD. Too expensive and too small. My RAID 0 performance is good enough. If I added an SSD I would lose a hard drive since I only have 4 ports available. Plus it doesn't fit in with my situation at all.