On Wednesday 10 February 2010 02:28:59 Stroller wrote: > On 9 Feb 2010, at 19:37, J. Roeleveld wrote: > > ... > > Don't get me started on those ;) > > The reason I use Linux Software Raid is because: > > 1) I can't afford hardware raid adapters > > 2) It's generally faster then hardware fakeraid > > I'd rather have slow hardware RAID than fast software RAID. I'm not > being a snob, it just suits my purposes better.
I don't consider that comment as "snobbish" as I actually agree. But as I am using 6 disks in the array, a hardware RAID card to handle that would have pushed me above budget. It is planned for a future upgrade (along with additional disks), but that will have to wait till after another few expenses. > If speed isn't an issue then secondhand prices of SATA RAID > controllers (PCI & PCI-X form-factor) are starting to become really > cheap. Obviously new cards are all PCI-e - industry has long moved to > that, and enthusiasts are following. My mainboard has PCI, PCI-X and PCI-e (1x and 16x), which connector-type would be best suited? Also, I believe a PCI-e 8x card would work in a PCI-e 16x slot, but does this work with all mainboards/cards? Or are some more picky about this? > I would be far less invested in hardware RAID if I could find regular > SATA controllers which boasted hot-swap. I've read reports of people > hot-swapping SATA drives "just fine" on their cheap controllers but > last time I checked there were no manufacturers who supported this as > a feature. The mainboard I use (ASUS M3N-WS) has a working hotswap support (Yes, I tested this) using hotswap drive bays. Take a disk out, Linux actually sees it being removed prior to writing to it and when I stick it back in, it gets a new device assigned. On a different machine, where I tried it, the whole machine locked up when I removed the disk (And SATA is supposed to be hotswappable by design...) -- Joost
