The database group at a highly successful Internet retailer has requested 1TB of space for organic growth in their online order database. The storage array is configured in a RAID 5 configuration. Whi

50GB IDE drives are outdated, have very low capacity, poor performance, and lack the reliability needed for an enterprise database application.

Fibre Channel (FC) drives offer high performance, enterprise-grade reliability, and excellent I/O capabilities, which are crucial for a demanding online order database configured in a RAID 5 array. Multiple smaller capacity FC drives provide better parallel I/O operations and performance than fewer larger drives, making 300GB FC drives a suitable choice for performance and capacity given the 1TB requirement.

While 1TB SATA drives offer high capacity at a lower cost, they generally have lower rotational speeds (RPM) and reliability compared to FC or SAS drives, making them less ideal for high-performance, critical database workloads.

3TB SCSI drives are also generally outdated technology; while SCSI was high performance, modern equivalents like SAS or FC offer better performance and density, and 3TB drives would be too large individually potentially leading to longer RAID rebuild times compared to smaller drives.