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DanTheMan <dan-suselist@execit.dk> 09/11/05 2:27 pm >>> Here are the specs of the machine that I am considering:

* 2 x Maxtor DM 10, 160 GB, 7200 rpm, 8 MB, SATA * 4-kanals Serial ATA-II 300 controller

What I want to do is run Hardware RAID 1. I haven't tried this before. I don't want to run software Raid because I read that if one of the HD fails then the system won't run until the second HD is replaced.

I don't know about that controller, but if SuSE supports it, yes it should work as you've described. For what it's worth, there's nothing wrong with software RAID, and whoever told you about a software raid system not running until the failed disk is replaced is false. I have a simple software raid 1 setup which is very reliable. 1 array for the boot partition (my system is a single partition) and 1 array for the swap. (hardware raid mirrors disks, whereas software raid will mirror partitions on disks therefore I have 2 raid 1 arrays). I have pulled drives from working test systems quite a few times and can verify it will keep running and that you can even reboot off the 2nd drive without problems and no, it's not messy to do. There are a couple of downsides but for myself, they weren't enough to justify the cost of a hardware raid. These are: 1) performance is affected slightly because the cpu has to do more, and both disks must be written too, individually. 2) simplicity. To replace a failed drive in a software raid, you need to re-configure the partitions on the new disk then add them back into their corresponding arrays. Typically with hardware raids you don't have to do this. SteveC