[CLUE-Tech] Speaking of RAID...

[Chris Dos]

Roy J. Tellason wrote:
> I'm giving some thought to setting up a RAID 5 array or two.  Looking at my 
> options,  I have a nice DPT card here that'll support this in hardware,  but 
> the docs with that seem to only allow for arrays that are all the same size 
> drive.  In my reading of various HOWTO and similar documents,  it seems to 
> indicate that this isn't a problem when doing it in software under linux.

Software RAID uses partitions to RAID, not hole disks.  Mismatching 
different speeds hard drives is in either software or hardware is 
generally not a good thing.  I've gone with software RAID because 
support native to the kernel.  Almost all of the IDE RAID cards I 
wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.  Most of these are just doing 
software raid behind their propritory driver.  And if they are doing 
software RAID, then I'll just use the native kernel driver and be in 
control of my system.

The only exception is cards made by 3Ware.  I've used these cards in 
servers for the last three years.  There have been native kernel drivers 
for these cards for as long as I've seen them.  Excellent performance, 
inexpensive drives.  Ebay has some deals on the cars as well.

	Chris