Re: RAID design

["David Rees" <dbr@greenhydrant.com>]

Gordon Henderson said:
>
>> I am not RAID expert but I really don't see the benefits of including
>> the OS in the RAID array as if the primary HD failed, the system won't
>> be
>> able to boot anyway. Am I right ?
>
> Not neccessarily. Modern motherboards will boot of either on-board
> controller, so if the primary failed, then the master drive on the 2nd
> controller ought to be able to boot. It's worth checking your motherboard
> though. All the systems I've built in the past 2-3 years like this have
> had this ability. You may need to physically unplug the failed drive
> though (and reboot) if it fails in a way that make it look like it's still
> active.

This is where having hardware RAID is a definate advantage over software
RAID as you won't have to intervene if one of your drives has half-way
failed and the primary is detected but you can't actually read from it. 
Now that you can pick up 3ware 6xxx cards for $60-70, you can't really
complain about the price, either:

http://www.weirdstuff.com/commerce/catalog/spcategory.jsp?category_id=1267&czuid=1058030005578

-Dave