On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 11:07:35AM -0600, Michael L Torrie wrote: > > Most consumer raid cards are really just software raid done in the > driver anyway. I've seen benchmarks that showed Linux' software RAID > works very well (RAID 0,1,5). I have been quite happy with software > RAID for my home machine. I know that Andrew McNabb is using about a > terabyte or more done with software RAID. >
Michael's point here is really important, as is the other comment that cheap cards don't have battery-backed cache. Also note that software RAID is more flexible than hardware RAID. If you're a tinkerer, Linux software RAID is probably better for you. If nothing else, you'll be able to spend that money on something more fun than a RAID card. My rule of thumb is to use software RAID for any machine where you could bring it down for an afternoon of maintenance and where there's a possibility of changing the partitioning, etc. and to use hardware RAID for any machine that can't have any downtime and where you set it up once and leave it alone. -- Andrew McNabb http://www.mcnabbs.org/andrew/ PGP Fingerprint: 8A17 B57C 6879 1863 DE55 8012 AB4D 6098 8826 6868
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