Dean Carpenter <dean.carpen...@transamerica.com>

IDE is not a good technology to use for RAID.  You can only talk to one
drive per channel at a time.  So your read/write cycles would talk to at
most two drives at a time, and never to both on one channel at once.

IDE has (AFAIK) more system overhead - it's a dumber interface.

Using Linux software raid will work, but I would expect it to be a dog.  
You're better off going with a cheap scsi card and a bunch of smaller
drives.  If performance isn't too much of a deal, go with narrow (50 pin)
drives - 10meg/sec.  For a faster system, go with wide (68 pin)
20-40meg/sec.

For better reliability, get a hardware solution.  A DPT SmartRaid IV or V,
AMI MegaRaid or Mylex DAC series all work well.  I use DPT at home, and the
AMI MegaRaid and Mylex DAC960PL at another client, all with great success.

Hot-swap rules !

Dean.

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From: CBR...@seitz.com@INTERNET
To: debian-u...@lists.debian.org@INTERNET
To: owner-linux-r...@vger.rutgers.edu@INTERNET
cc: DEM...@seitz.com@INTERNET
cc: R...@seitz.com@INTERNET
Subject: Raid 5 advice...
I want to put together a cheap server with lots of space, good
reliability, performance is not critical.

I was thinking of a Debian Linux system with say 4 UDMA 16-20g IDE
drives.

What is the best kernel and raid tools versions to be using for this,
from a data security and reliability standpoint?

TIA,

Chris

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