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Building a RAID server???
boykster:
Unless you run a redundant array of arrays (overkill for home usage) you will always be subject to a single point of failure taking the data offline - the controller card.
I like 3ware cards specificially because the array data/format is not card specific. An array created on an older 7000-8 card can be read on a newer 7506-8 card (etc) as long as the card supports that drive type (ie sata or pata). I have 3 arrays built with 3ware cards, and I keep a spare 8 port card handy in case I need it.
Mirroring using the onboard controller is fine, as long as the onboard controller doesn't fail. What do you do then?
RAID is not a failsafe for catastrophic data loss, just a technique to try to ensure data availability and uptime.
patrickl:
--- Quote from: boykster on December 17, 2007, 03:42:58 pm ---Mirroring using the onboard controller is fine, as long as the onboard controller doesn't fail. What do you do then?
--- End quote ---
Stick the disk(s) in another computer. Heck it would even work in a simple external housing and these are dirt cheap.
boykster:
--- Quote from: patrickl on December 17, 2007, 05:16:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: boykster on December 17, 2007, 03:42:58 pm ---Mirroring using the onboard controller is fine, as long as the onboard controller doesn't fail. What do you do then?
--- End quote ---
Stick the disk(s) in another computer. Heck it would even work in a simple external housing and these are dirt cheap.
--- End quote ---
Not necessarily; in fact a colleague of mine just had a 2 drive RAID1 mirror array die on him and he had to jump through hoops to get the data off. He had to buy an add-in card with the identical chipset and force the array to be recognized. Not all 'mirrored' volumes are just plain old regular volumes....
It is possible to use a bit for bit volume copy program ('dd' in linux for example) to backup a dying RAID drive however...
patrickl:
--- Quote from: boykster on December 17, 2007, 05:18:57 pm ---Not all 'mirrored' volumes are just plain old regular volumes....
--- End quote ---
Well my point was that I use mirroring hardware that does simply mirror two drives so that each drive will work outside of the RAID 1 array as a regular disk. Also that the RAID 5 solution that I use has disks that can be mounted and used in FreeBSD or Linux as an aray and the seperate disks contain mostly complete files. ie I'm not dependent on specific hardware parts to be able to access my drives within a reasonable time.
To be honest I hadn't considered that mirroring hardware would actually not simply mirror a complete disk. That sounds overly complex. I assumed they basically just duplicated the drive write commands to both disks.
Samstag:
When I built my most recent PC I thought onboard RAID 5 sounded like an excellent idea, but it's not. It's a proprietary implementation and of course the mother board went out after a couple of months. From now on I'll stick to my linux RAIDs. No matter which single piece of hardware dies, I can be back up in the time it takes to swap parts and/or rebuild a new drive.
It's also slow as molasses on my Asus board. Never again.
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