Hello SuSE folkz, We are working on community resume database project for unemployed folks in our area. It's a voluntary project with no connection to commercial institutions. The whole system should be running on Linux SuSE 8.0 with MySQL DB and require as low maintenance/administration as possible. Please read the description of this database and question asked. Data safety and redundancy problem is solved by replicating one database on another (master - slave relationship). The server simultaneously runs two MySQL databases on different RAID0 partitions. Both databases provide output (select queries) to the users and client API programs through the load balancing interface. But user input (insert and update queries) can be done only on master database. That propagates them to slave database with adjustable delay time between slave-master reconnection. In case of one RAID0 failure, remaining database becomes the master and continue to handle load until failed RAID0 drive is replaced and array is rebuilt. This approach eliminates nessesity in tape drive and periodical backup procedures. There are still some questions remain: What is better to use for data storage DB datafile on top of existing filesystem or raw device partition? InnoDB ACID compliant tables in MySQL can use both approaches. But in case with raw device partition InnoDB can perform unbuffered IO. As it said on their web site http://www.innodb.com - using raw device partition should improve performance on some UNIXes. But what is about Linux? If it's not true for Linux what filesystem is the best to home InnoDB datafile? Does DB performs better when it has smaller or bigger DB datafile or raw partition? What is more practical to assign one big e.g. 10GB datafile / raw partition for DB or start with smaller 100M datafile / raw partition and add additional datafile / raw partition when the first one becomes full? If you have a better idea for safe data storage, integrity and operation, please let me know. Thank you in advance. Alex