On 24/02/13 11:14, Terry Coles wrote:
On Sunday 24 Feb 2013 10:35:18 Ralph Corderoy wrote:
The setup is using a hardware based RAID Controller (Intel) with two
100 GB discs.
Does it support a third? Plugging it in for as long as it takes to
become a good copy would be another option.
The machine only has two externally accessible removable drive bays. I don't
really want to break open the hardware, since I have a pretty extensive
Warranty.
That assumes Linux supports the controller BTW; if not, you've got to
stick with XP or duck below Intel to the drives.
Hmmm. I hadn't thought of that. Generally Intel is pretty good with Linux
and RAID is more likely to be used in the Enterprise than anywhere else, so I
should be OK.
With respect to questions 3 and 4, I read in some forums that people
clone a single disc and then let the RAID rebuild itself when they
restore. That sounds a bit fraught to me, so it makes me nervous.
Why's that? Are you concerned about putting your one good copy under
the care of the controller whilst you hope it does the right thing?
That's about the size of it. However, see below.
Good idea to back it up BTW; "RAID is not backup", as the mantra goes.
This 'backup' is to allow the original system, (with all our software
installed), to be restored in the event of a catastrophic failure of the
machine.
The RAID is to improve Availability, which is critical in this installation.
If a disc fails, the user's can fix it later, but the machine will continue to
work until they can take the machine off line.
Even then, the backup is the last port of call. Under normal circumstances,
if a disc fails, the the user's will replace it with the spare and allow the
system to rebuild.
I use Clonezilla from a bootable USB or CD to back up my wife's XP
machine. Not the data, but the OS partition, and I back it up to an ext4
partition on the same disc. It's not a regular occurance, but just to
give me a bare-bones system that could be restored in case of a
disaster. Saying that makes me think it might be a good idea to back up
the clonezilla backup off-PC.
You don't mention where you intend to back up your stuff to. Is it an
attached external disc(s), or across a network? Will Clonezilla make a
copy of each raid disc, or will it make one copy of the lot somehow that
can then be restored to two raid discs?
Peter
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