As far as I know you CANNOT use partitions to create raid, only whole hdd's. I do not know if linux's software raid has such capabilities, but every onboard hardware raid that I worked with has no such option. More then that, what is the point in doing raid on a hard drive that is used to store other (non raid protected) info ?
My advice is to use 3 80Gb HDD's with normal Adaptec PCI IDE card in raid5 configuration. That way, at least, you will be more safe then sorry :) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eran Tromer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Linux-IL mailing list" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 8:35 PM Subject: Software RAID advise > Ahoy, > > I'd appreciate advise on the following. > > My main workstation currently has two 80GB ATA drives. One is used > mostly for backups of the other, so I have just about 80GB of effective > work space. I need more space, and more speed, so I plan to buy a 160GB > ATA/133 drive and configure the three drives as follows: > * 160GB 3-way RAID5 via Linux's software RAID, using the two existing > 80GB disks and half of the new 160GB disk. > * The other 80GB of the 160GB disk used as a separate partition for > less important (i.e., easily recoverable) stuff. > > Is there some problem with using half-a-disk for the RAID array? How bad > is it that the three 80GB partitions making up the RAID5 reside on disks > of different makes and models, contrary to common wisdom? Assuming low > load on the extra 80GB partition, is there some reason to use RAID4 > (with the parity on the 160GB disk) instead of RAID5? What's the best > RAID chunk size for a workload typically consisting of 2-3 heavy batch > jobs plus normal interactive desktop use (I was thinking of 128KB or > 256KB)? Is there a really good reason to get an IDE RAID PCI card? How > much trouble should I expect from mkinitrd, Knoppixen, etc? > > > Eran > > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
