I currently am formatting a new 16TB EX-4100 networked drive. I need the drive to have a redundant back up of all the data on it. In the past I have used RAID1 allowing for 8TB of usable space with the other 8TB used as a mirrored back up.
I have recently learned that RAID5 can provide some redundancy, but not sure exactly how good it is or how it works. It appears that I can use RAID5 to get 12TB of usable space with only the remaining 4TB as a back up. Is this correct? If so does that mean the back up is compressed to some degree? Is it a full back up as reliable as a mirrored back up in RAID1 format?
I also understand that RAID5 may be faster and I will no longer have to decide upon which drives to place data since RAID5 will do it automatically. Is this correct as well?
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!