From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Dec 29 15:17:58 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 F28F216A41F for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:17:57 +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 013DA43D8D for ; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:17:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from cswiger@mac.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pi.codefab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 188AB5D78; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:17:07 -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 56076-10; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:17:05 -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 4D3255D3D; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:17:05 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <43B3FE02.7080908@mac.com> Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:17:22 -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: <43B3F341.5030906@mac.com> 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 15:17:58 -0000 Joe Auty wrote: > Some great advice here! > > What RAID level would you recommend for simply maximizing the hard disk > space I have available? RAID-0 striping. Note that it gives you no redundancy or protection. > This is just my personal backup machine and > will consist of two drives, so I don't need kick ass performance, and I > don't need my files mirrored. I take it that striping is what I need to > look at? RAID-0? Can I setup striping without reformatting, or only > mirroring? If you plan to use RAID most effectively, plan to reformat. Do not attempt to setup RAID without having backups. However, you can glue two disks together without reformatting using something called "concatenation", but it doesn't perform as well as reformatting using striping. -- -Chuck