Re: [linux-lvm] failing hard drive

[Tim Milstead <tim@arabidopsis.info>]

Stuart D. Gathman wrote:
> On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Lamont Peterson wrote:
>
>   
>> If you're not using RAID, might I suggest that you do?  Those 9 disks would 
>> make a nice RAID5 or RAID6 array, and LVM works beautifully on top of 
>> software RAID, hardware RAID or any combination of both.
>>
>> LVM does not provide redundancy (yes, I know it can do mirroring, but I 
>> wouldn't suggest that), it's about easily managing lots of storage space.  
>> RAID is about reliability/redundancy.  Use the right tool for the right job, 
>> and use both tools together to get all the best benefits of both.
>>     
>
> In my use, reliability is paramount.  So I prefer RAID1.  You get 
> a performance boost for reads as well.  The md based mirrors can be
> mounted separately (careful!) if needed for data recovery and bug workarounds.
> (E.g. On Centos-3 grub won't install on mirrored boot partition.  So 
> unmount md0, setfaulty hdb1, mount hda1 /boot, grub-install, umount hda1,
> mount md0, raidhotadd hdb1.)  RAID5 arrays can only be accessed as raid.
>
>   
Well I changed the drive and it seems to work although dd appears to 
have copied the error across beacuse smartd reports

Device: /dev/hde, 1 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors.

I guess this would be expected? There are no heat issues.

You are correct about the redundancy issue - it's not my choice. I think 
space was paramount when the machine was built.

Thanks for all the help,

Tim.