on 3-14-2008 7:33 AM Therese Trudeau spake the following:
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?
AFAIR (at least with 3ware) the newer cards will usually still support the older arrays.