On Thursday 18 March 2004 20:28, Avtar Gill wrote:
John Andersen wrote:
If one insists on mirroring swap its best to get one of those hardware raid controllers which eliminated the need for software raid and often the OS is totally unaware it has a raid. Those things are rally cheap these days ($30) if all you want is raid 1 mirroring.
Those cheap "hardware" RAID controllers are actually semi-software controllers - they rely on the OS's RAID implementation for most of the actual work. If you want true hardware RAID then expect to spend a couple hundred dollars. The 3ware ones seem pretty decent. So having said that, relying on the Linux software RAID implementation does't seem like such a bad idea.
You can tell by the chipset if its a real raid controller, also if it has raid setup software onboard. (And yes, still at $30). If it has a utility for defining raid arrays chances are you system will not even see separate drives, in which case there is no OS involvement. I've even moved one of these drive arrays originally set up on Windows to Linux and it mounted it, found the vfat partition and was none the wiser. You don't have to spend that kind of money any more unless you want high-performance raid 5. (Oh, and the thing performed deciently too...) -- _____________________________________ John Andersen