> Theory vs. real life. In Theory, RAID5 is faster because less > data have > to be written to disk. But it's true, many RAID5 controllers > don't have > enough CPU power.
I think it might not be just CPU-power of the controller. For RAID0+1 you just have two disc-I/O per write-access: writing to the original set and the mirror-set. For RAID5 you have three additional disc-I/O-processes: 1. Read the original data block, 2. read the parity block (and calculate the new parity block, which is not a disk I/O), 3. write the updated data block and 4. write the updated parity block. Thus recommendations by IBM for DB/2 and several Oracle-consultants state that RAID5 is the best compromise for storage vs. transaction speed, but if your main concern is the latter, you're always best of with RAID0+1; RAID0+1 does indeed always and reproducably have better write performance that RAID0+1 and read-performance is almost always also slightly better. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org