web/file server partitioning help

[myrddin]

I'm looking at setting up a web/file server for a few personal websites with LAMP and my downloads and etc to store. The server will have 3 hdd, each with 250GB all the same model. The two questions I have are:

1. what would be a good partitioning scheme
2. which RAID level would best suit these needs.

[neutrino]

Concerning the RAID part, it depends what security level you want, many things are possible.

A raid 5 with all 3 disks (safe).
A raid 1 with 2 disks and the last disk makes a daily backup (safe)
A raid 0 with 2 disks and the last disk makes a daily backup (not really safe, but better performance if you have many disk access)

Btw i don't know what kind of website you want to manage but 250 GB for a website is really huge even with a big database and many pictures

[myrddin]

Thanks, neutrino for the reply; I'll probably go with your second option of raid 1 and a backup drive. As for the partitioning scheme I know my description is pretty vague; this is what I'm thinking of separating on a Ubuntu 8.04 server:

/boot 100MB
swap 1.5GB

LVM (not sure on the sizes)
/
/usr
/tmp
/var
/home

other possibilities:
/usr/local
/var/www
/opt
I know the initial sizes don't matter that much because of LVM but if someone could give me some suggestions of sizes that would be great. Also if the layout is alright and maybe some suggestions to make it better.

Thanks!