miguelmedalha at sapo.pt wrote: > I know that Linux RAID will create a universal, more compatible array, > readable on any Linux machine. But is there some other reason that > makes it preferrable to use the SERVERAID driver provided by CentOS? > Is it optimized in any way that recommends its use? I always prefer hardware raid over software raid primarily for hot swap purposes, if a drive is dead I just yank it, replace it and don't have to worry about it, rebuild is automatic. This may be the case with linux software raid now I'm not sure, a few years ago hot swap was somewhat iffy and results varied widely on the controller(e.g. could panic/hang the box in some situations). Also root on raid is much simpler with hardware raid than software raid. If you have battery backed cache as yours appears to have, you have the added advantage of write back caching which can give higher performance. Out of the 400 or so raid cards I've used over the years I recall only 2, maybe 3 of them having trouble(failing/faulty). So in short I always prefer hardware raid because it is simpler to operate for me at least. That is provided it is a true hardware raid controller, there are a lot of shit hybrid software/hardware raid cards out there, I do not trust them. nate