Let me add more to this (or less....)

I think RAID V is a wonderful thing, whether done in h/w or
software- but please be aware that in the h/w case, like with
disk drives, you aren't always getting necessarily more
reliable h/w- in some cases you're just buying deniability.

I have never understood why very good Unix OS engineers seem
to gladly relinquish the reliability of data to the ups
and downs of RAID box and disk drive F/W folks- some of whom
are very good, but many of whom are, err, umm, *confused*
as to how to do things well. And I speak as someone who
spent a chunk of the first part of his career as a f/w
writer.

Jordan- I think I agree mostly with what you're saying if
you want to have as much uptime as possible. But I don't
believe that A) H/W Raid is as good as people say it
is and B) that CCDs put data at risk as much as people
say it does.