[TriLUG] IDE RAID vs. md

[Jason Tower]

software raid (md raid) works very well with mirroring (raid level 1).  
there's really no need to invest in a hardware raid controller unless 
you need maximum performance, in which case you'd probably be using 
scsi anyway.  you'll notice a performance hit on a slow machine since 
IDE disks suck up some cpu cycles as they go about their business, and 
you'll have two of them working simultaneously.  but it's barely 
noticable on anything slower that an a PII.  and if you are using them 
in a backup box like lisa mentioned, then performance is not much of an 
issue anyway.

jason

On Monday 04 August 2003 12:58, Ken Mink wrote:
> Hello All,
>   I recently purchased a pair of 120gb drives to use as a mirrored
> pair in my server at home. As I've taken more and more digital
> photographs, the fear of what my wife would do to me if the drive
> they're stored on crashed got me thinking about protecting the data.
> The machine is older(aren't all of our home servers?) and doesn't
> have a motherboard with a RAID controller. I have used md in the past
> and don't have a problem with using it here. The machine does not see
> heavy use, there's only the two of us. So my question is, should I
> purchase a IDE RAID controller and if so, which one, or is md okay?
> Oh yeah, these would be the only drives in the machine and it's
> running rh7.3.
>
> TIA,
> Ken