[CentOS] A question about RAID and partitions

[Miguel Medalha]

Perhaps I am wrong but I feel that my question didn't receive an answer yet; 
the discussion digressed a bit.
So, let me rephrase my question:

Which one is better, RAID devices created on top of partitions or partitions 
created on top of RAID devices?

By "better" I mean under the aspects of data security, performance and 
ability to recover from a disk crash.

Thank you again.


>I am about to begin the installation of a small server (no more than 20 
>users), using CentOS with Samba to authenticate Windows XP workstations. A 
>question arises about the organization of the filesystem. I hope that more 
>experienced and knowledgeable users here will be able to give me some 
>precious advice.
>
> I have 2 120GB SATA disks on which to install the OS. I want to create the 
> following partitions:
>
> /boot
> /
> /tmp
> /var
> /home
> /swap
>
> Two options are now present to me:
>
> - Create a single RAID 1 device with both entire disks and then partition 
> on top
> - Create several RAID devices, one for each partition (md0, md1, md2 and 
> so forth)
>
> Which one would be better from the points of view of performance, security 
> and data recoverability?