Yes, this is on of those "do my job for me" questions, have some pity:)

I'm at the limit for what I can do with the number of hard drives in a server without spending a substantial amount of money. I have four drives left to configure, and I can either set them up as a RAID 5 and dedicate a hot spare, or a RAID 10 with no hot spare. The size of each will be the same, and the RAID 5 will offer enough performance.

I'm RAID 5 shy, but I also don't like the idea of running without a hot spare. I'm not so interested in degraded performance, but the amount of time the system is without adequate redundancy. The server and drives are under a 13x5 4 hour response contract (although I happen to know that the nearest service provider is at least 2-3 hours away by car in the winter).

I should note that the server also has two RAID 1 arrays which would also be protected by the hot spare. Why don't they make drive cages with 9 bays! Heh.