On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 11:44:52AM -0400, BodellS@cooleygroup.com wrote:

I am relatively new to linux and suse. i've been running Suse 9.1 on an AMD64 as a guest os under VMWare. We've been testing linux capabilities but keeping windows as main os for windows network admin etc. Well I'm ready to switch to Suse 9.1 64 as host os and put windows on as guest.

the problem is RAID. My mother board, ASUS K8V has on board raid which i have been told is not "TRUE" RAID and therfore not supported. So now, I'm considering software RAID or buying an inexpensive 2 channel SATA RAID controller. My question is, - Is hardware RAID worth the extra money in performance/reliability/etc or should I go with software raid

"Cheap" hardware raid (as usually found in motherboards or the cheaper cards) is basically identical to software RAID, except that it uses a vendor proprietary format. Just go for standard Linux software RAID, that has the best compatibility. For highend hardware RAID there are advantages in reliability, but they are often slower than software RAID. Highend RAID means expensive server RAID Adapters like Megaraid or cciss.

- If hw RAID is the way to go, which has driver support for 64-bit linux?

The 64bit kernel has a standard RAID0/1/5 driver (MD) that works fine. -Andi