<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>Am 29.07.2008 um 23:04 schrieb Eduardo Grosclaude:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 1:23 PM, Lanny Marcus <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lmmailinglists@gmail.com">lmmailinglists@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Eduardo: To give you something else to consider, as an alternative: I<br> believe there was a long thread here, awhile back, about using<br> Software RAID, instead of fake RAID controllers. Software RAID works<br> very well, as I recall from reading that thread. Possibly look into<br> changing to Software RAID. Depends on the HW RAID controller. </blockquote><div><br>Yes, I finally ended up installing software RAID because<br>1) I have read that, even if I installed the proper driver, Linux only uses it to configure its own dm software RAID device according to the BIOS conf-- is this completely true? If yes, no real offloading anything to hardware anyway-- even under Windows; does anybody know about this for sure?<br> 2) I am very scared by non-kernel-tree-blessed modules which have their own install procedures and/or updating schedule, I have been bitten by this in the past.<br><br>I finally did setup two 1-RAIDed identical partitions and installed the system on the rest of both disks... Now my system won't boot if one disk is broken, but I hope I can go rescue into the data. I was formerly hoping to rely on RAID to protect the full install and simplify my life, but I was discouraged away by 1) and 2).<br> <br>I have yet to see a real RAID controller... At what price do they start off?<br></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br><div><br></div><div>For two channels, there's little that is worth paying for, IMNSHO.</div><div>3Ware 8006 is only SATA-one, not SATA-II (two), which brings its own set of problems.</div><div>For four channels:</div><div>See <a href="http://www.areca.com.tw">www.areca.com.tw</a> for models and use your local search engine to find a good offer.</div><div>It's not cheap, but you get top performance. I see that they now also offer a two channel SATA-II RAID controller - newegg lists it for 180 USD. Software RAID gets more attractive every day...</div><div>I can also recommend their 8 and 12 port controllers - but as discussed last time, the more disks you add, the less flexible hardware-RAID (and Linux) get and Solaris/ZFS make more sense then (16 disks upwards IMO).</div><div>If your storage needs are not constantly growing, Linux is OK.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>cheers,</div><div>Rainer</div><div><br></div></body></html>