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Relative hard drive configuration performance

An occasional client is experiencing a server failure and their improvement in the performance of their LOB had me wondering relative performance based on drive configuration.


Their situation is the LOB vendor supplied the server, a Windows Server 2003 computer, and was supposed to be monitoring it. They have 4 hard drives in it. 3 make up a RAID 5 array and the 4th was supposed to be a hot spare. Recently we noticed that 1 of the 3 drives failed and the 4th did not kick in. Turns out they hadn't configured the RAID controller to email them when there was a problem and the 4th drive wasn't set up to be a hot spare, We set up the hot spare but now it seems another drive is failing, while we wait for the replacement drive. And the server has become unstable, rebooting during the day.


They moved the LOB to a desktop computer while they send replacement parts. Good thing it's a small office as the Win Vista Business only allows 10 connections.


The server is still up most of the time and is doing DHCP and DNS. To the point of the question, they say performance of the LOB has improved.


In general and speaking in relative terms, would anyone care to comment on relative performance of different drive configurations?


a single drive

Hardware RAD 1

Hardware RAID 5

Degraded Hardware RAiD 1

Degraded Hardware RAID 5

Hardware RAID 6

Hardware RAID 10


Certainly this specific situation has many other variables since its an entirely different OS, processor, RAM, et al. I am just curious how much improvement could be attributed from going from degraded RAID 5 to a single drive. And yes, the quality of the hardware likely can have an influence. I am speaking in general terms though.


Thank you
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David
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OK, again, in general

Would you be surprised  moving an LOB from server with server 2003 and degraded raid 5 to win vista 32 bit business low / medium end desktop with single drive would get noticeable  better performance?

or with those admittedly vague specs, would the answer be "got a coin"?
The server has more ram than the desktop, it's running server OS. Bueller?
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