On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 20:01 -0700, Todd Cary wrote: > Will I be able to ue software RAID? FRAID _is_ software RAID. It just typically uses the FRAID vendor's driver, instead of the OS. Newer kernel 2.6 developments with Device Mapper (DM) are now able to read some of the reverse engineered, proprietary FRAID disk organization and interpret it. Once that is done, the DM implementation can use the software RAID in the Linux kernel to drive the disk organization -- and much more efficiently than the FRAID implementation. FRAID is _rarely_ faster than the OS' native software RAID. And vendors can _rarely_ offer FRAID drivers for Linux, because they contain proprietary code for the RAID licensed from 3rd parties. Hence the continued problem, and the need for solutions like kernel 2.6's DM. Unfortunately, FRAID models vary in their disk organization, so you can't always trust these reverse engineered developments. And then you have the whole kernel volume/software stack, which has race conditions, etc... that I just don't trust at this point. But I won't go there. -- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith at ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The best things in life are NOT free - which is why life is easiest if you save all the bills until you can share them with the perfect woman