#1 In a real world for small non-profits, in many cases, its what was left over or donated, so question one, does the softraid, bioctl, have to much heartburn if the drives are not the same geometry... I've always used matching drives for raid of anytype, but even $60*2 for two drives is a stretch for some nonprofits these days
#2 And the next question in the subject, thinking about which mounted partition changes the most frequently through the day that would be /var The others, /usr for example don't change as much and could be rsync or tgz nightly...or weekly.... however... perhaps /home and /tmp, but definitely /var. could change significantly during the day..... For example the log files, /var/mail, /var/mysql and so on are active. I wander about /var/mysql and ldap being on a softraid.? How insane would it be to use the new softraid features for all of /var .... to make a mirror raid 1 of say 3 drives and then dump and restore the orig. /var to that softraid and change /etc/fstab for /var to use it? #3 Of note, as I understand (might not documented in man yet) if one or two of the three raid1 partitions making the volume fails, it will keep running but cannot be rebuilt... To 'rebuild' means dumping the volume, in this case /var with say 'dump' may be best over pax/tar and then making anew a softraid and restoring the dump. But what happens if the computer reboots with say the third drive missing the power cable? and it runs for a day or so, then tech reboots with molex plug put back it? does the softraid catch the third drive up? This is something I guess I could test myself, just asking. tia.
