The previous restore procedure was tried on a 2-drive RAID-0 with custom 4kB stripe, a 4-drive RAID 0+1 with default 64kB stripe, and a 4-drive RAID-5 with default 64kB stripe. Windows backup showed the time it took to restore the 23 GB backup file containing 143,000 files to the RAID arrays. The backup file was on a 120GB Western Digital ATA-100 hard drive. The 4-drive RAID 0+1 was fastest, clocking in at 25 minutes. A close second was the 2-drive RAID-0, coming in at 27 minutes, probably due to the smaller, customized stripe size. Significantly slower was the RAID-5, which required a full 43 minutes to complete the restore.

The Sisoftware Sandra Standard 2004.10.9.89 file system benchmark of the RAID 0+1 resulted in drive index of about 43,000. The RAID-5 configuration gave a reading of 50,000. While RAID 0+1 is faster than RAID-5 for restoring the backup, it is slower based on the Sandra benchmark. This is because Sandra factors in many aspects of performance, including read, write, and transfer speeds. RAID-5 is slower for writing, but it can outperform RAID 0+1 when read speed is factored in. In a 4-disk RAID-5 array, the equivalent of three disks are striped, whereas in a 4-disk RAID 0+1 array, only the equivalent of two disks are striped.

The Sandra benchmarks for these Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000 RPM drives are lower than what may be expected. Sandra reports a reading of over 61,000 for a 2-drive RAID-0 array of Maxtor 10k RPM 36GB SATA-150 hard drives. This could be due to a number of factors, including the RAID controller, central processor, motherboard, driver, etc.