On Fri, 24 Jan 2003 10:26, Tinus Nijmeijers wrote: > My question kind'a stands: If the only thing I ask of it is for the data > to be safe (no speed or "no downtime!" issues) is there any reason to > use hardware over software raid?
No. > I do not care if I have to take the server down for an hour (or 2, or 3) > to replace a disk, be it a raid disk or boot disk. I have plenty of > time, I could even run down to the store, get a new bootdisk, install > debian and be up and running in 2 hours. no problem. > > ONLY thing that is important is that the data needs to be safe. if 2 of > the raid-disks fail I need the data to be safe. Then put three disks in a RAID-1 so that if two disks die at the same time you still won't lose any data. With flakey drives such as the Hungarian Death-Star's from IBM you can lose two drives in such a short time period that you can't replace one before the other dies. Scenario 0: Boot of a software RAID-1 of two 200G IDE disks, tape backup Costs the same as scenario 1 but performs better and is easier to manage. > Is hardware raid "safer"? > > (I do not think it is, I'm just waiting for someone to tell me I'm being > naive here) No. In fact it's less safe because you don't have such direct control over what it's doing. You have to go through a hardware-RAID BIOS menu or something to set it up and the disk formats are not documented anywhere. With software RAID-1 you can mount any disk independantly of the RAID which can really help you on occasion. -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
