You are definitely making your life more difficult then is needed for a desktop machine.
You said you have 4 hard disks. Make a software RAID1 out of the first two. Make a software RAID1 out of the second two and your good to go.
You can use dump/restore to backup the logical volumes on the second RAID set to an LV on the first.
No need for bare metal restore. Just need to get some working Linux distro to be able to read your files.
Going HW RAID for your desktop is going to get in the way of you getting things going and if your HW RAID card fails then what? Your drives will only work with another identical HW RAID card.
-Ross
That makes total sense Ross, I think I may end up going with software raid and investing in a good hot swap redundant power supply that would fit into an ATX case, combined with a good UPS.
That brings up a last question on possiblity of either a 3ware or acrea RAID 1 cards. I'm wondering how long I would be able to order a replacement RAID card from either of 3ware or areea. Anyone know if 3ware or acrea stock identical replacement cards for their SATA 4 port raid cards for several years out? Do they stock past the three year warranty period?
The problem with this is if you buy the previous generation card because it's cheap and vendors stop selling it then you may be SOL.
OK I guess I have a solution now, I just called 3ware and spoke with sales.
On the 9650 se 4 port SATA cards, even if the card fails, they say that I could use a different model card from them if the old card is dis continued; because if the original fails, they designed it such that I could replace it with a different card. I could even migrate a drive to a different motherboard- and still read one of the mirrored drives.
For the 8006 series card, this is not the case, I would have to buy the same model card, however I would be covered for at least four years, because this card is still in production and probabally will be for another year, and with the three year warranty I would be covered for at least four years from purchase time if the card dies and I need a new one.
I need one of each card, a PCIe and an older design PCI. _________________________________________________________________ Connect and share in new ways with Windows Live. http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008