[WBEL-users] IDE RAID controller

[John Morris]

On Mon, 2005-06-06 at 08:53, Tom Brown wrote:

> Need to purchase an IDE RAID controller that will work well with WB 3 or 4
> 
> Any suggestions as to what to buy/avoid ?

First you have to make the big decision, software or hardware RAID.  If
you are ready to pony up the bux for real hardware then keep
researching.  But if you are going software then I'd advise you GO
software.  The proprietary drivers do a good job of hiding everything so
that it looks like a single drive but in reality they perform just like
the built in software RAID in linux, except the Linux RAID has been
through a lot more QA and code review.  And mdadm will send you email
when a drive fails.

That means forget the vendor supplied driver that never works right and
requires constant care and feeding across kernel upgrades.  Just make
sure the card you buy is supported as ordinary IDE interfaces by the
stock kernel IDE drivers and most qualify in that regard.  Then use
thier proprietary BIOS interface just once, to make sure it is switched
off and the interfaces are ordinary IDE.  Make sure you have /boot on a
RAID1 so grub will boot it or keep one drive on the motherboard's normal
interface for /boot.  The only feature I don't get from my Highpoint 4
port card is hot plug and if I dug around enough I could probably get
that working.

-- 
John M.      http://www.beau.org/~jmorris     This post is 100% M$Free!
Geekcode 3.1:GCS C+++ UL++++$ P++ L+++ W++ w--- Y++ b++ 5+++ R tv- e* r