From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Jan 29 16:16: 6 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0D9AD37B401 for ; Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:16:05 -0800 (PST) Received: from msgbas1x.cos.agilent.com (msgbas1x.cos.agilent.com [192.25.240.36]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F60C43F93 for ; Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:16:04 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from darrylo@soco.agilent.com) Received: from relcos2.cos.agilent.com (relcos2.cos.agilent.com [130.29.152.237]) by msgbas1x.cos.agilent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E36616381; Wed, 29 Jan 2003 17:15:47 -0700 (MST) Received: from mina.soco.agilent.com (mina.soco.agilent.com [141.121.54.157]) by relcos2.cos.agilent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id F11F856B; Wed, 29 Jan 2003 17:15:43 -0700 (MST) Received: from mina.soco.agilent.com (darrylo@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mina.soco.agilent.com (8.9.3 (PHNE_25184)/8.9.3 SMKit7.1.1_Agilent) with ESMTP id QAA08793; Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:15:33 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200301300015.QAA08793@mina.soco.agilent.com> To: Bruce Campbell Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: seeking recommendation on ATA RAID controller Reply-To: Darryl Okahata In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:11:34 EST." <1043874694.3e384386371b7@www.nexusmail.uwaterloo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 1.7) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:15:32 -0800 From: Darryl Okahata Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > If anyone has particularly good or bad experience, I would like to > hear about it. I have not bought the drives yet, but will need > 4 drives of roughly 160 - 200GB, on each controller. How important is the data? A big issue is, "What do you do if the controller dies two years from now." Will replacements be available? (Will you even care about the data then?) If you've got the money, you can just buy spare RAID controllers. Alternatively, since you're dealing with ATA drives and modest data throughput requirements, you might want to consider software RAID (vinum, in particular -- I assume you're talking about FreeBSD). It's quite nice, and does not depend upon any particular controller (or even a particular location on the IDE bus -- if you need to, you can move the disks to another computer, without having to remember which drive was connected where). If you need lots of IDE drives, you can simply add just about any inexpensive IDE controller to your system (or more than one). The only real downside to vinum is that you can't use it on the root filesystem (well, you can, but it's currently a bit kludgy). -- Darryl Okahata darrylo@soco.agilent.com DISCLAIMER: this message is the author's personal opinion and does not constitute the support, opinion, or policy of Agilent Technologies, or of the little green men that have been following him all day. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message