Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:31:29 -0500 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: Joe Auty <joe@netmusician.org> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: your advice on vinum, RAIDs Message-ID: <43B3F341.5030906@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <B302EFD3-19ED-43B5-B4AD-07BDCF9273A9@netmusician.org> References: <B302EFD3-19ED-43B5-B4AD-07BDCF9273A9@netmusician.org>
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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
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