RAID - software vs. hardware

Solution 1:

I prefer HW raid, 'cause if you have to pull good disks out of a dead machine you're not limited to the OS configuration of the raid "array".

You do keep backups of your RAID controllers config, don't you?

So just load that up on a donor machine, slot in the drives (in the right order! You did label your drives before your pulled them right?) and restart on a clean OS and your data is recovered.

THE OS DRIVES ARE NOT IMPORTANT DRIVES TO KEEP. THE MOST IMPORTANT STUFF TO KEEP IS THE DATA DRIVES!!!!

(You do backup your DATA drives, right?)

Solution 2:

I prefer software RAID.

Software RAID has the big advantage of not being tied to a particular set of hardware. For example, I've had controller and/or mainboard failures which result in loss of the array.

Today's CPUs are plenty fast enough to handle parity on RAID-5 variants. I've also never had any issue with bus saturation from multiple concurrent reads.