For an opinion on the external array question. I run such a RAID5 array on Linux, with three external drives in USB2 enclosures, actually connected to 4-USB port PCCard in a duffer old laptop. In such a setup, because the data is spread over the three drives you'll lose write performance due to it being written to multiple drives. However, if you've already ripped your music then I don't imagine you'll be writing a huge amount to it very often, so that's probably not a concern.
Even with FLAC stored on such an array, USB2 over multiple drives will still have plenty of bandwidth to spare for reading from the array, and write performance shouldn't be too uncomfortable unless you're in a real hurry, so I don't see a problem with that for this application. One thing to be aware of with RAID in Linux (and probably others, too), which is particularly relevant to an external array setup is what will happen if one of those drives is turned off. To the host this will look like a drive failure and so it will pull the device out of the array even though it's not failed. You can add it back with no data loss (but with a lengthy rebuild time on a large array [but the array remains online while this is going on]), but it might be a pain. Worse, in my application with those drives connected to a laptop, is that if there's a power cut then the drives all go but the laptop still runs because of its battery. This can cause all drives to be marked as faulty, which can't be automatically recovered from. You can manually force those 'failed' drives back into the array (which I've done several times, never with any noticed loss), but it's more complicated. I suppose I should remove the battery from the laptop so it will all 'fail' at the same time. Just something to think about. In my experience kernel RAID in Linux works extremely well and it's never let me down. As others have said, though, it's not backup so you'll still need your external disk to periodically take an 'off-site' snapshot. Sorry for the ramble, Stuart bmorejojo wrote: > ...Are there issues with an external array if > I only have USB 2 connections? ... > Thanks for any suggestions. _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
