tblader spake the following on 3/29/2007 6:16 AM:
Scott Silva wrote:
Dave spake the following on 3/27/2007 3:13 PM:
Hello, I've got a 4.4 box that i'd like to implement software raid on. Does anyone have any experiences with this? Thanks. Dave.
I have used software raid many times, and still use it, although on a more limited basis. It is a very mature technology, and IMHO it is better than all of the fakeraid controllers I have ever seen.
Been running software raid-5 (knoppix) on a workgroup server for over a year. Had a drive fail a couple weeks ago, everything kept right on going.
One drawback is software raid wants a single ide device on each ide channel. This means buying an ide card (if you want more than two devices) which doesn't always play well with the rest of the system (4+ ide devices). Some mainboards might have more than two ide channels, but I just opted for the cheap ide card.
You can run 2 drives on each controller, especially with raid 1, but you lose some of the benefits. With mirroring, you could have the primary slave mirror the secondary master and so on. That way if the primary slave goes down and takes the primary master with it by locking up the channel, your array will still function somewhat. Not the best way, but it will work. Don't do raid5 this way.