Best raid recommendation with 3 identical drives question

I am currently running 2x320 Seagate sata2 16mb cache drives in raid 0. I am concerned about data loss, Currently running a triple boot as well. I purchased an identical matching drive today and have given thought to a 4th match, but an option is to go raid 5 with the 3 I have

Raid 1 mirroring does not provide me enough storage. Raid 5 (via software not a raid controller card would be the method used), it will work with 3 drives but I wonder how performance overall will be affected on a system used for video encoding and gaming plus general use compared to bucking up and buying a raid controller card or would it be cheaper to buy a 4th drive and go raid 0+1. I would like to continue with a triple boot as I have now XP Pro/XP64/Vista Business

Current hardware is
P5N-E SLI
2x1GB Gskill HZ PC6400 DDR2
2x7600GT SLI
Antec Neo HE 550 watt psu (should be fine with 3 or 4 drives)
floppy
7 in 1 card reader
dvd burner
1 120 mm case fan
E6300 soon to be runnning 24/7 @ 3.2ghz

Feedback as I have not played with raid 0+1 ever nor raid 5. Last I guess I could just add the new drive on as a storage slave unit utilizing Vista Business features backup utility. Not that worried about XP64 as eventully I will remove it and place on a different machine

RAID5 write performance is a bit lacking, but reads will be close to what you're getting in RAID0 (can be higher, depending on the controller). RAID0+1 may not give you much, if any advantage, over RAID5 considering the overhead in not using a hardware-based controller during reads. Writes will be much higher. The disadvantage there, of course, will be the loss of direct storage since you're using half your space for redundancy.

As a rule, I'd follow this:

High read environment - RAID5
High write environment - RAID1 or RAID0+1

Thanks for reply Jon, looks as though I am leading to raid 5. I know testing is only way to determine the stripe size and what will provide me the best performance using the software raid controller, any recommendation on stripe size?

Second if I opt for a hardware raid card what represents good value at a fairly reasonable cost?

Stripe size is dependent, primarily, on two factors.

1. What size files are going to be saved to these drives?

2. How often will data be written to, and from, these drives?

Frequent read/writes of small files = small stripe size. Frequent read/writes of large files = larger stripe size.

For reasonable cost, you're not going to get a pure hardware-based RAID card. None that I would bother with even come below $300, but that's just me. For reasonable prices ($120-$250 range), the HighPoint cards about all that's available. There are some LSI Logic, Promise, and Tekram around there, but HighPoint typically have the most options available in that price range.

Recommending HighPoint only comes from encompassing all aspects - price, performance, and available options. I won't dare say they are the best card in any one area. My personal preference would be something from LSI.

thanks for feedback any personal thoughts on either of these 2 cards based on what I am willing to pay, I realize they may not be the best but I have to go with what i am able to afford

-Promise FastTrak SX4100 PCI SATA hwd RAID5 w/64MB
-HIGHPOINT ROCKETRAID 1810A 4 CHANNEL SATA RAID PCI-X

I guess I can always try the onboard solution, but expect loss of performance, see if it is worth dealing with and if not consider the above solutions or another brand

If you're working with standard 32-bit/33Mhz PCI slots, then the HighPoint is probably your best bet for the money.

If you've got PCI-X or at least 32-bit/66MHz, then the Promise will give you a boost over the HP (it's XOR assisted). However, for the money of the Promise, I'd go for LSI's MegaRAID 150-4 if you have a 64/66 PCI. Mostly depends on the slot at this point.

It's too bad 3Ware is at the $300 range for 4 ports.