Jim, On 1/31/06 3:12 PM, "Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> The alternating technique in mirroring might improve rotational latency for >> random seeking - a trick that Tandem exploited, but it won't improve >> bandwidth. > > Or just work in multiples of tracks, which would greatly reduce the > impact of delays from seeking. So, having rediscovered the facts underlying the age-old RAID10 versus RAID5 debate we're back to the earlier points. RAID10 is/was the best option when latency / random seek was the predominant problem to be solved, RAID5/50 is best where read bandwidth is needed. Modern developments in fast CPUs for write checksumming have made RAID5/50 a viable alternative to RAID10 even when there is moderate write / random seek workloads and fast read is needed. >> >> Works great with standard OS write caching. > > Well, the only problem with that is if the machine crashes for any > reason you risk having the database corrupted (or at best losing some > committed transactions). So, do you routinely turn off Linux write caching? If not, then there's no difference. - Luke