I would like some advice with the array

[Ayman Altounji]

I recently started at this company and also I am new to this job. I have one ML530. I want to install windows 2000 advanced sever and a financial sotfware. since I am new to this job, I don't know what would be the most efficient and safe way to make the array. this server has 12 SCSI hard drives (36.4 G. each). I don't know if I should make just one raid 5 with one spare disk or leave 10 HD for the array and leave the other two for raid1. I will really appreciate your input in this matter.

[Ayman Altounji]

I would probably create RAID1 (mirror) from the first 2 drives. Install the OS here, fastest. Then, just put the rest under RAID5 - unless you expect to load something that may need large log files or caching space (like Exchange, SQL...), in which case you may want another RAID1 array for that purpose and the rest under RAID5

[Ayman Altounji]

the above is my advice too, but i'd use 1 drive as a hotspare because with that many disks in the raid 5 set (10) the chances of losing 2 disks and therefore all your data increases exponentially........better paranoid than unemployed