Question then, I haven't setup software raid on IDE. I've only done this with SCSI so...My question, I have a machine that will become my "server" and I want to raid the IDE's, I simply setup 2 on Chain one and 2 on Chain 2 and RAID 1 them (Chain 2 mirroring Chain 2)? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 3:22 PM Subject: Re: hw vs sw raid (was Re: [TriLUG] RAID newbie question...)
Jason Tower [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > true story: last year i was called in to fix a system that used software > raid 1 on a data partition (but not the other partitions). one of the > disks had failed and the system would no longer boot. i slapped a > knoppix cd in the drive, brought it up, mounted the remaining raid > partition, and scp'd the data to another system. software raid 1 is a > good thing :-) This is an important point, that perhaps may have been missed. With HW RAID, you're pretty much locked in. If you HW RAID card dies (it sucks), you either swap in the spare that you had laying around, hope you can find a used one off eBay, or just kiss your data good-bye and head for the tapes. There is no 'standard' for HW RAID data. Every vendor (and oftentimes even within a vendor -- different products) has a different format for how they store their blocks. For instance, if you have a HW RAID set up with 3Ware, you cannot use one of the Promise (yes, they make a -true- HW IDE RAID card) if the 3Ware dies. If you're using software RAID, you can move the drives around and still access them, or, as Jason did, even use knoppix. So, if you're looking for cheap, decent perfomance, just go software RAID. There is a performance hit, but the cost and flexibility make up for it. Mike -- "If life hands you lemons, YOU BLOW THOSE LEMONS TO BITS WITH YOUR LASER CANNONS!" -- Brak GNUPG Key fingerprint = ACD2 2F2F C151 FB35 B3AF C821 89C4 DF9A 5DDD 95D1 GNUPG Key = http://www.enoch.org/mike/mike.pubkey.asc -- TriLUG mailing list : http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug TriLUG Organizational FAQ : http://trilug.org/faq/ TriLUG Member Services FAQ : http://members.trilug.org/services_faq/ TriLUG PGP Keyring : http://trilug.org/~chrish/trilug.asc
