[Darfyddi]

Hello all,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to read this. This is my first post here and I don't know much about Raid and other things. My setup is in my sig below (I hope)

I have 3 WD1001FALS Caviar Blacks in RAID 5 through the MOBO ports with the MOBOs supplied software(plus a couple more HDD for back up of important bits) and a couple of years ago one HDD failed in the array so I just purchased a second hand one, zeroed it and stuck it in the array, every thing was dandy but a couple of days ago my boot screen flagged up another error - Nvidia tools thingy tells me that disk6 on SATA Channel 3 is faulty (god know which one it is as they all show up with the same name).

Looking at what is available now I have discovered that Caviar Blacks are not suitable for RAID but I am not too worried as at about 5years so far I think I have got good value out of them in this set up considering they aren't meant to be RAIDed.

My quandary now is this - should I just replace like for like for the broken disc or what do you think of this as a potential setup on a very low budget:

DRIVE 1: SAMSUNG 128GB 840 PRO MZ-7PD128BW (currently £117) and I believe it will work on my SATA II MOBO???
DRIVE 2: RAID off PCI-e card - see below.
DRIVE 3: WD Elements External - just keeping my old one as that seems to be ok for what we need.

DRIVE 1: I believe that the Samsung is probably the best for value and I will only be running Win7U64, MS Office 2010 (full), GIMP2 and BF3 ( ) off it - everything else will go into DRIVE 2.

DRIVE 2: I need help choosing the card and HDDs - can I run a SATA III card plus SATA III HDDs with my MOBO and what would you suggest for best value? I am looking at storing about 3TB initially but this will increase over the years so was thinking of either 3 or 4 1TB HDDs and adding to it as time progresses (I already have 3 good WD 1TB blacks) or should I buy some 2TB NAS spec drives? The only problem with this is I can only find WD RED 2TB at good value but I thought these had bad reviews but I only saw one bad review and everyone ele pointing to that review??? At the moment I like the RAID5 setup as even with a dead disc I still have all my info with no extra work to be done and this is the best RAID I can do through the MOBO software.

So, please excuse my waffling on above... to sum it up...
1.> Is the SAMSUNG 128GB 840 PRO MZ-7PD128BW any good and if so, any cheaper with 5yr warranty in the UK?
2.> For >3TB+ storage with no concerns over speed what cheaper but good quality RAID card works on my MOBO/OS.
3.> What HDDs are good for long life, little use RAID.
4.> The best RAID I can use through the MOBO software is RAID5; is there a better suggestion if I do use a RAID controller card?

Cheers for your advice, sorry for the essay.