From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mark Knecht Subject: 3 disk RAID1? Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2010 12:39:26 -0800 Message-ID: <5bdc1c8b1003081239l32c5653fs8347179e23c0a287@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Return-path: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Linux-RAID List-Id: linux-raid.ids Hi all, I'm still very much on a steep learning curve about what I can do with Linux software RAID. In another thread this weekend a couple of responders discussed among themselves 3-disk RAID1 solutions that can survive if 2 disks die. I don't understand what that means. Can someone point me at a quick explanation? Is that really possible? In general I'm using a few Wikipedia pages and gravitate toward the diagrams as much as anything. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID1#RAID_1 RAID0 - striping, speed not reliability (2 disk minimum) RAID1 - duplicate data, no other protection (2 disk minimum) How do I build RAID1 using three drives? Just duplicate the data 3 times? If drives start going bad how do I determine which one or two are failing? (fsck? SMART?) With 3 drives 1 fail seems relatively straightforward to figure out, but 2? Thanks, Mark