[KLUG Members] RAID

[Adam Williams]

>Now: considering I am a home user, I have two big points of failure: one
>HD could melt, or the mobo could. Now, if a drive goes, no big deal (so
>say I now). But if the mobo goes, will I need another Promise card (or
>Promise-sporting mobo) or is RAID RAID no matter what chipset/software
>supports it, and dedicated hardware support is simply more efficient?
>In sum, am I better off, at my level of use, using software MD, which
>can mount my drives on *any* motherboard under most Linuces (such as
>Knoppix)? TIA.

Yes.  

Hardware raid is `always' (i.e. 99.44% of the time) controller
specific.  If your going to use hardware RAID use a card ***NOT***
integrated on the mobo, and have another one around.  Thats another
reason why I like the IBM ServeRAID SCSI RAID cards,  they are
plentiful.  Of course, you could always keep a spare mobo around.... but
I can always find other uses for my home system dollars.

I've found software RAID in Linux to perform very well,   recovery is
easy; assuming you have some idea what was in /etc/raidtab (nothing like
a hard copy :).  It even supports hot spares.  It is certainly
sufficient for the home/small-office user.