RAID 6 vs 10? (5 Drives)

[mrmrmr]

Hi, i'm using a Lacie 5Big, Thunderbolt 2 controller. I have 5 (4tb) drives. I previously had it in RAID 5, and was getting write speeds of about 700 mb/s. After reading some scary things about RAID 5 and already having it fail me once, I decided to delete the Array and change to RAID 10-- Now i'm only getting about 320 mb/s write, and with 8TB of storage as opposed to the previous 16tb. My question is, is it perhaps a better performance option to go with RAID 6? With RAID 6 I can make use of all 5 drives--so will this make it faster? or will the additional parity hinder the performance and make it even slower than RAID 10 with only 4 drives? Thanks so much for your advice and knowledge

[einstein9]

Which drives you are using? Seagate/WD ?

(exact model is better)

[Zorb]

You can't have an odd number of drives in a RAID 10. You can have the fifth as a spare/standby drive, but not as a working part of the array.

As far as something failing you, take a hard look at the chassis itself. It's more likely to let you down than the drives are, unless you stock it with Seagate 7200.11s or something. I don't know why anybody buys LaCie anything anymore.

[DR-Kiev]

You can't have an odd number of drives in a RAID 10. You can have the fifth as a spare/standby drive, but not as a working part of the array.

As far as something failing you, take a hard look at the chassis itself. It's more likely to let you down than the drives are, unless you stock it with Seagate 7200.11s or something. I don't know why anybody buys LaCie anything anymore.

That is wrong opinion. Almost all recent controllers have capabilities to build raid10 based on odd number of drives.
Raid10 not just mean each independant disk should have own mirror.
It is matter of order: Block1, mirror1, block2, mirror2 and so on.
For the odd number of drives one extra mirror just jump to the next line and sequence just shifts.

[Zorb]

...
That is wrong opinion. Almost all recent controllers have capabilities to build raid10 based on odd number of drives.
Raid10 not just mean each independant disk should have own mirror.
It is matter of order: Block1, mirror1, block2, mirror2 and so on.
For the odd number of drives one extra mirror just jump to the next line and sequence just shifts.

I have never seen a controller operate in this manner. A Raid 10 is two identical RAID 1 arrays striped together. What you are describing here is NOT a nested RAID level, which RAID 10 is. This is instead a nonstandard array that sounds more like something a DROBO would do.

[DR-Kiev]

...
That is wrong opinion. Almost all recent controllers have capabilities to build raid10 based on odd number of drives.
Raid10 not just mean each independant disk should have own mirror.
It is matter of order: Block1, mirror1, block2, mirror2 and so on.
For the odd number of drives one extra mirror just jump to the next line and sequence just shifts.

I have never seen a controller operate in this manner. A Raid 10 is two identical RAID 1 arrays striped together. What you are describing here is NOT a nested RAID level, which RAID 10 is. This is instead a nonstandard array that sounds more like something a DROBO would do.

That is mean you have quite a little expirience with raid controllers and arrays. Use every modern IBM or Dell controller to build raid10 and dedicate odd number of drives, you will see interesting thing.
Drobo is absolutly different story.