On Mon, 2005-09-26 at 20:16 -0700, nobozoz wrote:
> My dad is looking at a Dell Dimension 9100 with the SATA RAID-1 option.
> He'll keep just about everything else standard except the monitor which will
> be the 20-inch Digital LCD so he can run dual-monitor with the LCD and his
> existing 17-in CRT.
While I don't care for Dell, the 9100 is not that bad, and it only takes
about an hour to rip out all of the extra crap software that Dell
installs.
> Is this SATA RAID-1 option worth the money?
Yes, RAID-1 is always worth the money.
> If one drive dies, can he swap out the bad one with a spare and have the
> RAID array repair itself on-the-fly?
Usually. I don't recommend rebuilding "quasi" raid (such as motherboard
raid controllers) without making a backup of the working drive first. I
once had a promise raid on on ASUS board that rebuilt a raid1 as a
raid0, and deleted exactly half of every file.
> Can he Hot-swap the SATA if one drive dies, or no?
hotswap is a software issue with SATA, if it may or may not be
supported. Of course you would have to open the case to change out the
drive (it's not front accessible), so I would not suggest doing it.
Harry
> _jim
>
