Best HDD config for web, mail and FTP server

[gavinj]

I'm here to seek advice on the best way to configure my HDD for my intended use. I have a P4 with a 20GB and a 40GB drive. I've purchased two 160GB drives for use in the machine as a server.

The intended use is as a web, mail and ftp server. I'd like to do some virtual web hosting and offer a mail service too. Ftp would be for users to upload their webpages.

My biggest fear is being able to recover from a hardware failure in as little time as possible. I know fans and HDD have a finite life and sooner or later I'm going to have a HDD failure. I don't have a hardware raid controller, but could do it in software. What would be the best way to configure the system. I'd like to be able to do weekly backups and daily incremental backups.

Thanks for the great forum!

[cvncpu]

i think for speed you would want RAID 0, and for redundancy, you need some other raid which i forgot about

[gavinj]

I'd prefer not to go with Raid 0 since half your data is in one place and the other half is somewhere else. Lose half your data due to drive failure and it's all gone. Raid 1 provides redundancy.

Should I just run the two 160GB drives as raid 1 and mounted as /var with all user data and use a 20GB for system files?

[Giro]

RAID5 is the best setup IMO.