From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 29 14:31:14 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1D1B116A41F for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:31:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from pi.codefab.com (pi.codefab.com [199.103.21.227]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 95AF643D48 for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:31:13 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AB3C65D69; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:31:12 -0500 (EST) Received: from pi.codefab.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (pi.codefab.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 56076-06; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:31:11 -0500 (EST) Received: from [192.168.1.3] (pool-68-161-122-227.ny325.east.verizon.net [68.161.122.227]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD0DA5C8C; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:31:11 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <43B3F341.5030906@mac.com> Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:31:29 -0500 From: Chuck Swiger Organization: The Courts of Chaos User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Joe Auty References: In-Reply-To: X-Enigmail-Version: 0.93.0.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at codefab.com Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: your advice on vinum, RAIDs X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:31:14 -0000 Joe Auty wrote: > I've been considering buying another hard drive for my FreeBSD machine, > and building a RAID with my current hard drive so that both drives are > treated as one. This is known as RAID-1 mirroring. > Do any of you have experience in this area? Is this advisable? Yes and yes. :-) > I'm assuming I'd be looking at creating a RAID-5? Not with only two drives. RAID-5 needs at least 3, and is wasteful unless you have 4-5. > Can this be done without reformatting my current drive? You can set up mirroring without reformatting, but be sure you have good backups of your data regardless. > Does this setup work well? Do you have any general advice for me? I need to > know if there is risk involved here. When choosing RAID levels, you are making a tradeoff between performance, reliability, and cost: If you prefer... ...consider using: ----------------------------------------------- performance, reliability: RAID-1 mirroring performance, cost: RAID-0 striping reliability, performance: RAID-1 mirroring (+ hot spare, if possible) reliability, cost: RAID-5 (+ hot spare) cost, reliability: RAID-5 cost, performance: RAID-0 striping If you've got enough drives, using RAID-10 or RAID-50 will also improve performance compared to stock RAID-1 or RAID-5 modes. -- -Chuck