On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 21:54 -0400, Chris Mauritz wrote:
It is FAR more likely that you'll lose a disk than the hardware RAID card.
Exactly. "On-line" backup (RAID, snapshots, etc...) is not a replacement for "off-line" backup (tape, RRD, maybe some HDs), although near-line (power/usage managed HD) is somewhat of an option (especially when not sending everything to tape, which is a good strategy today).
I can't imagine why the original poster is using the 3Ware card as a "dumb" IDE controller. That makes *zero* sense.
Well, he did say something I didn't think of, there was no real hot-swap support except for with a 3Ware card. But I want to say that RAIDCore (typically 8-channel ATA PCI cards that use their own FRAID driver(s)) also has hot-swap too.
It's at least as reliable (and maybe moreso) than the Linux software RAID bits (which is also pretty darned reliable).
Other than the 3Ware 6000 series, I have _never_ heard of an issue with RAID-5.