From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 10 21:05:52 2005 Return-Path: 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 8525816A4CE for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 21:05:52 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.goinet.com (mail.goinet.com [208.207.72.15]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2E52643D49 for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 21:05:52 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) Received: from mail.goinet.com (localhost.goinet.com [127.0.0.1]) by mail.goinet.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id j4AL5oON036563 for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 16:05:50 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) Received: from localhost (tshadwick@localhost)j4AL5oHQ036560 for ; Tue, 10 May 2005 16:05:50 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from tshadwick@goinet.com) X-Authentication-Warning: mail.goinet.com: tshadwick owned process doing -bs Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 16:05:50 -0500 (CDT) From: Tony Shadwick To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20050510155942.V34838@mail.goinet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.84, clamav-milter version 0.84e on mail.goinet.com X-Virus-Status: Clean Subject: Hardware RAID 5 - Need vinum? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 21:05:52 -0000 I've worked with RAID5 in FreeBSD in the past, with either vinum or a hardware raid solution. Never had any problems either way. I'm now building a server for myself at home, and I'm creating a large volume to store video. I have purchased 3 200GB EIDE hard drives, and a 6 channel Promise SX6000 ATA RAID controller. I know how to set up a RAID5 set, and create a mountpoint (say /media/video). What my concern is when I start to fill up the ~400GB of space I'm giving myself with this set. I would like to simply insert another 200GB drive and expand the array, allowing the hardware raid to do the work. The problem I see with this is that yes, the /dev/(raid driver name)0 will now be that much larger, however the original partition size and the subsequent slices will still be the original size. Do I need to (and is there a way?) to utilize vinum and still allow the hardware raid controller to do the raid5 gruntwork and still have the ability to arbitrarily grow the volume as needed? The only other solution I see is to use vinum to software-raid the set of drives, leaving it as a glorified ATA controller card, and the cpu/ram of the card unitilized and burden the system CPU and RAM with the task.