Fernando Gleiser wrote: > yes, ita bunch of 12 7k2 RPM disks organized as 1 hot spare, 2 parity disks, > 9 data disks in a RAID 5 configuration. is 9/2 a "high ratio"? Perhaps RAID 6, as I've never heard of RAID 5 with two parity (two parity is dual parity which is RAID 6). RAID 6 performance can vary dramatically between controllers, if it were me unless you get any other responses shortly I would test other RAID configurations and see how the performance compares RAID 1+0 RAID 5+0 (striped RAID 5 arrays, in your case perhaps 3+1 * 4 w/no hot spares? at least for testing) RAID 5+0 (5+1 * 2) RAID 1+0 should be first though, even if you don't end up using it in the end, it's good to get a baseline with the fastest configuration. I would expect the RAID card to support RAID 50, but not all do, if it doesn't one option may be to perform striping using LVM at the OS level. nate