> Would RAID-1 be a good idea to avoid the problems from that "yearly" HD crash?
>
> 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.
RAID is useful if you want to avoid downtime and restores. But keep in mind that
drives have a limited lifetime. I prefer to keep a single disk with my fileserver
volumes and just back up periodically. It's not as onerous as it sounds for even
large disks since most files are static. The stuff that changes often gets copied
periodically to other disks via cron.
For the actual web, mail, and file server OSes I use mirrored disks. The OSes are
Xen domains on LVMs served up by the host. If one drive fails I pop in another drive
and it takes a few hours to synchronize, though the box is up during the process.
It's hardware RAID (Adaptec, don't recall the model offhand) so the Xen OS just sees
a single disk.
-- * The Digital Hermit http://www.digitalhermit.com * Unix and Linux Solutions kwan@digitalhermit.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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