Re: [SLUG] Is RAID worth doing?

From: steve szmidt (steve@szmidt.org)
Date: Thu Jul 13 2006 - 12:27:49 EDT


On Thursday 13 July 2006 11:44, Donald E Haselwood wrote:
> Would RAID-1 be a good idea to avoid the problems from that "yearly" HD
> crash?

RAID-1 is a perfectly good way of saving data.

> A partition on my 160 GB drive that holds my Suse9.2 came up with errors.
> Fortunately, it was a partition that held some old backup files so nothing
> important was lost. I do have my important data files well backed up, but
> if the partition holding the system fails it takes a lot of time to get
> everything setup. I was wondering if RAID-1 with a second HD would be
> better than, say, merely copying the whole partition, or some similar
> backup scheme.

If you are running hardware raid then the O/S does not even know there are
multiple drives. Under software raid it's managing it. You cannot boot on a
s/w raid as it's not "up" until after boot has started. So then you need to
keep a seperate non raided boot partition.

If you go that way the problem with the second drive is that it would not have
the boot partition. You could create it on it too, and copy the kernel on to
it. Don't forget the boot sector.

Linux knows where on the controller chain it is. If you install it f.ex. as
the primary drive (hda) on the first controller then it cannot boot in any
other position. Any other drive you want to boot from must obviously be
bootable. So the boot info must be placed manually on it.

For this reason I prefer h/w raid. Now raid is loaded long before the o/s is
and it can go it's merry way booting off any drive.

And as others have said it's not a substitute of backup as removed data will
be removed across all drives in the raid. But it does give better data
retension than single drives.

Newer drives have higher data density, but they also have newer and better
technologies which is a lot better than before. I see quality control issues
as the biggest problem. All manufacturers mess up every now and then.

-- 

Steve Szmidt

"To enjoy the right of political self-government, men must be capable of personal self-government - the virtue of self-control. A people without decency cannot be secure in its liberty. From the Declaration Principles ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.



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