Chris is very much on point. But if --for what ever reasons-- it has to be a one hard drive (hd) solution then understand that bad power and heat and then shock are your hd's enemies.
Use a ups with o/s graceful sync/shutdown signalling enabled. If not a full ups, then an active line-conditioner (not a passive surge bar) can help (power sags are more common and, in context, harmful then blackouts). Mount the hd with regard to heat dissipation AND WITH its own active fan moving air across the hd. Depending on your chassis, best heat dissipation location may not be where the oem chassis' drive bays are located. The older the generation of hd generally and scsi especially it happens to be the more important this is to extending (and realizing) the hd's full life expectancy. Physically locate the machine so as to NOT be subjected to physical shock or vibrations. Sitting the machine on bare upper household floors is not bounce (shock) or vibration free. Whether it exceeds tolerances or not depends on your household. Then, go heed Chris' points as well and any way. /Scott -----Original Message----- From: Erik WikstrC6m <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Improving disk reliability Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:29:38 +0100 Mailer: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031) Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hi I am setting up a OpenBSD box to act as a router/file-server for my parents, the box consists mostly of old parts and I try to not spend any extra money on it. One of my biggest worries is, since it will act as a file-server which will contain stuff with some emotional value, data- loss. The preferable way to solve this would probably be to use two disks but that is not an option for me. So I was wondering if it is possible to instead split the disk in two parts, the first is used to install OpenBSD on, and the rest is split in two and setup in a mirror configuration using RAIDframe or something similar. If this is possible, will it buy me any additional protection against dataloss, or is it more likely that my disk crashes all together?
