I have some old rack boxes which are going to get some bigger harddrives (IDE/ATA, not SATA) in Spring and I'm wondering if I should put two disks in them and use them as RAID 1 (software RAID). Objective being that the machine can hopefully carry on after (one) disk failure (including rebooting). I don't have any experience with software RAID. Can I do this during the normal CentOS (4) setup or can I even do this later (when there's only one disk and I add another one)? Does it make a difference performance-wise? (slight drop?) Is it reliable, so that it will fulfill on the purpose or should I better forget it? (Replacing the mainboards or adding RAID controller cards is out of the question.) I'm certainly willing to read a How-To or other documentation, but since it's completely new to me I'm not really sure where to start searching.
Kai