begin quoting Gregory K. Ruiz-Ade as of Sat, Dec 15, 2007 at 10:12:05PM -0800: > On Dec 15, 2007, at 4:36 PM, SJS wrote: > > >The promise of hardware RAID (for me) was transparency -- but this > >was never delivered, so far as I know. You had to have a RAID-aware > >OS to use hardware RAID, instead of having a device that could > >transparently give you RAID benefits on "legacy" and small systems. > > There do exists raid systems that will do all the raid for you without > the host OS knowing about it. However, you then need an OS that is > aware of your SCSI controller. Or your SATA controller. Or your > FireWire controller. Or your USB controller.
I never saw these when I last went looking for such things. Everything I found required specialized drivers in the OS. (That doesn't mean they weren't out there, I grant. Only that I never saw 'em, and that the preponderance of the available systems didn't do this. To my suprise and dismay.) > Having to complain about drivers is silly, though, No it isn't. When you replace a Western Digital drive with a Maxtor, you don't need to install a new driver. When you then replace that with a Seagate drive, you don't need to download, configure, and install a THIRD driver. This is why we have interfaces. You don't need a custom driver every time you want to change out a disk. You don't -- didn't, for a few years -- need a custom driver to talk to an external modem. Or printer. Or terminal. Or a monitor. Or keyboard. Or mouse. > since you still > need SCSI, SATA, FireWire, USB, etc. drivers for THOSE to work. > > So where do you draw the line? Where it's sensible -- at the disk-interface. It's reasonable that a RAID of SCSI disks would present itself as a SCSI device. Likewise a RAID of SATA disks would presumably present itself to the system as a SATA device. If you REALLY wanted a RAID of USB disks... -- Drivers should only be needed for TYPES of devices, not for models or makes. Stewart Stremler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
