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HPT370 RAID-1 or Software RAID-1, what's "best"?

DISCUSSION Thunder from the hill 5 participants 5 messages Mar 14, 2002 – Mar 15, 2002

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#0 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Martin Eriksson

What is "best" on Linux 2.4.X (with any appropriate patches) ?

HPT370 RAID-1 or Software RAID-1 ?

And if Software RAID-1 is best of these two, where is it most stable; on an i815 chipset, a VIA chipset (686B) or on a promise controller?

I define "best" as:
* most stable
* least complex setup
* least hassle when something goes wrong

Software RAID is just your disk configuration. But I'd recommend hardware raid because the rebuild after one disk crash is dog slow with software raid. This problem been discussed in all possible linux magazines...
I prefer SCSI RAID5

Thunder

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#1 lore raw
Quoted 4 lines

Software RAID is just your disk configuration. But I'd recommend hardware raid because the rebuild after one disk crash is dog slow with software raid. This problem been discussed in all possible linux magazines...

The raid rebuild time is identical for pretty much any set up. With the softraid its intentionally defaulting to a low fraction of I/O bandwidth so it doesnt disrupt normal operation.

Also as far is his question goes - both are software raid

#2 lore raw
In reply to Thunder from the hill

HPT370 IDE Raid is not really an hardware raid.
It is a software Raid, since Linux does not use tha raid implementation that comes with the BIOS, but it uses softwareraid.

Quoted 42 lines · Thunder from the hill
Quoted 11 lines · Martin Eriksson

What is "best" on Linux 2.4.X (with any appropriate patches) ?

HPT370 RAID-1 or Software RAID-1 ?

And if Software RAID-1 is best of these two, where is it most stable; on an i815 chipset, a VIA chipset (686B) or on a promise controller?

I define "best" as:
* most stable
* least complex setup
* least hassle when something goes wrong

Software RAID is just your disk configuration. But I'd recommend hardware raid because the rebuild after one disk crash is dog slow with software raid. This problem been discussed in all possible linux magazines...
I prefer SCSI RAID5

Thunder
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Extract this and see what will happen if you execute my signature. Just save it to file and do a

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#3 lore raw

----- Original Message -----
From: "Luigi Genoni" <[email protected]>
To: "Thunder from the hill" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>; "Martin Eriksson" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 15, 2002 10:31 AM
Subject: Re: HPT370 RAID-1 or Software RAID-1, what's "best"?

Quoted 3 lines

HPT370 IDE Raid is not really an hardware raid.
It is a software Raid, since Linux does not use tha raid implementation that comes with the BIOS, but it uses softwareraid.

Well, even if it uses the BIOS raid, the CPU still has to do all the work. You can easily spot true hardware raid because of the largish PCI boards, and the big onboard processors. But this is a budget project... so no true hardware raid.

I have come to a conclusion now though... as this machine will be used without a monitor, any RAID arrays will be controlled via a web application. To do this I need software RAID. Also, from the start it will be running the following config:

Celeron-II CPU on an i815 board, 256MB RAM

P/M: Boot drive, temporary backup storage for CD-R backup (a few gigs) P/S: RAID-1 disk #1

S/M: CD-RW drive
S/S: RAID-1 disk #2

In the future, if more storage is needed, there will propably be a three to four-disk RAID-5 array with some/all disks on a promise controller.

Now this has gone off-topic, so please send replies only to me.

PS. the "mdadm" package is very nice. Among other things it solved the "array is in use" problem.

#4 lore raw
In reply to Luigi Genoni
Quoted 1 line · Martin Eriksson

Now this has gone off-topic, so please send replies only to me.

CC me please. :)

Gruß
Uli

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'The box said, 'Requires Windows 95 or better', so i installed Linux - TKK 5