Hardware RAID

[Stijn Hoop]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2005 at 05:22:36AM -0800, Sandy Rutherford wrote:
> >>>>> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:57:21 -0800, 
> >>>>> "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com> said:
> 
>  >   This did teach me a lesson that I kind of knew already but
>  > didn't think too much about.  That is, a software array is no substitute
>  > for a hardware array.  ...

I respectfully disagree here; it is a substitute in some respects,
especially if you factor in cost.

My vinum volumes allowed me to survive for a long time without backups
(bad idea, don't do that), and for the past years have allowed me to
survive without having to restore my backups. This through about 5
failing ATA disks and multiple upgrades of the storage space.

I'd say it was worth it for me, including reliability.

If you need speed, or have the cash, etc, you can go for hardware
RAID.  But even there I've seen and heard horror stories of
incompatible disks, spontaneously lost configurations or even worse,
silent data corruption due to a bad disk.

I've setup a gvinum mirrored system also, and tried booting it without
one of the disks -- you don't need geom_vinum for that so it *is* self
sufficient in case of failures.

As always, choose the tool that's of best use to you.

--Stijn

-- 
"An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals, that's all."
		-- Shigeru Miyamoto
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