Experience with RAID 5 setups?

Has anyone had experience with RAID level 5 setups (fault tolerant and striped array: 3 or more disks, 1 parity drive)?

Note: This is not the same as RAID 0+1 or RAID 10.

In particular, the RAID 5 offered in Windows 2000 Advanced Server (What I run on my server setup)? How well does it perform and is it "full function" or "entry level" RAID 5?

If you have had experience with RAID 5 setups, what happens if the single parity drive fails in your array?

I know in full function there is a parity drive as well as some parity across the entire array (correct?), but what about "entry level" RAID 5 arrays?

Entry level or high end server RAID 5 is still the same, striping with partity. information goes on the first 3 drives, then partity on the last, the for the next write information goes on the first 2, parity on the 3rd, and info on the 4th...etc it keeps rotating.
So you don't have one single parity drive. If you want information to go on x drives and parity info on only one single drive, you'll have to run RAID 3.
The only reason you should do RAID 5 (or 3) is if you need data redundancy, and you want as little as overhead as possible. RAID 5 IS NOT FOR SPEED. I'll say it again, RAID 5 IS NOT FOR SPEED. If this is your PC I would advise against RAID 5 as much as possible.
Using software RAID 5 will cause the speed to be even worse, and your cpu will bear the full load of calculation where to write data and stripe it etc.
I've done RAID 5 before with a RocketRAID 404 controller (4 channel IDE controller), and it was dismal. My buddies ibm thinkpack with a pentium 200 had faster HDD writes than my 7200 8mb cache drives with a 2.5ghz computer. Reads are pretty good, but they'll suffer a lot from software.
Another drawback from using an OS based software RAID is if something goes corrupt in the OS, you won't be able to get information off the array!!!!!
Basicly I would post your situation and what you want to accomplish and have people help guide you to a better alternative.

Yeah thanks for the info. I guess I was a tad confused about RAID 5 and where the parity info went.

Speed is not a big factor. This is for my personal file server which basically sits there with HD's and files on it. Theres not even a CDrom, just HD's. So the CPU sits dormant unless I am xfering alot of files to it or running Folding.

My main idea for running RAID 5 was to maximize my price vs. storage space of the drives I put in my server, while not totally sacrificing data if a drive goes on a striped setup. I have already gone through the pain of using a software suite like R-Studio to recover what I could from a damaged RAID-0 array.

Currently I have 2x200gb drives in a RAID1 array for my most valuable data that I cannot afford to lose. Then I has an OS system drive that runs by itself. What I have left is a few 120gb drives that run in RAID0 that I just throw media and other things that take up alot of space on. Now if a drive dies in that RAID0 setup, not a huge deal, but its a pain in the arse to have to go get the stuff again. Its also not valuable enough for me to get 2x the drives and run a RAID0+1 setup.

So someone told me that 2000 AS, my current OS on the server, had RAID5 integrated into it. Sure enough it does. So I figure I can get a few more 120gb drives and run them in that configuration so if a drive does die in the array, its not a total loss. And I only lose 120gb of capacity to parity.

Now what you said about if the OS crashes... That does sound bad. I could always RAID1 my OS/system drive too (its a small 40gb). That should take care of that.

So, I know write speeds are pretty bad with RAID 5 setups. Though are the read speeds somewhat faster due to data being somewhat striped between the drives in the array? Also if a drive does die in the array, is there zero data loss or some?

Ok, in this situation a RAID 5 would make sense. And I would run the OS on a separate RAID 1 array (if this is possible...i've never tried RAID 5 using the OS).
When a drive dies, the computer can still read all the data, it just takes longer, it has to read data from 2 drives, then using the 3rd drive calculate what the data that's missing. You can replace the drive, and once it's replaced rebuild the array. However, I'm not sure how user friendly the software RAID 5 is...i'm used to doing RAID setups with controllers where it's nice and easy to access during bootup.

I read up on it on the MS website, and I have some experience using software RAID0 in AS. Everything is built into the Disk Manager in the control panel. You just format all of the drives as what MS calls, "Dynamic Disks". Then mount them all as a RAID5 array. I guess I never noticed since I never had more than 2 dynamic disks on there.

When a drive dies, the disk manager in AS just flags the broken drive as !Failed!, then you replace the drive and remount it (basiclly a right click on the broken drive and say repair array). Now wether or not it is that painless, well see.

Thanks for all of your help. Ive learned way too much in the past hour or so about RAID, doing some surfing. Imglad I dont have to pay $200 for a RAID5 card too, its in AS.