Re: [PLUG] Ubuntu + RAID5

["Randy Schmidt" <x@altorg.com>]

I'm the highpoint 1640. The individual drives do show up when I first
boot without loading the module. I have gone back and forth on whether
I should do a software raid or a hardware raid. I went about setting
up a software raid first but ultimately settled on doing it the
hardware way. I like that the hardware will tell me when there is a
problem with one of the drives.

When I had tried software raid, I used mdadm and went looking for
tutorials/guides. I followed the steps and everything worked until I
rebooted. Also, I couldn't find good information on the full lifecycle
of a software raid. What happens when a drive fails? how do I make it
start up when the system is rebooted?

Anybody have words of wisdom on pros/cons of software v. hardware raid?

Thanks,
Randy

On 9/22/06, Will Dyson <will.dyson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/06, Randy Schmidt <x@altorg.com> wrote:
> > Hi all:
> >
> > I am currently putting together a RAID5 with 4 300 gig disks. I
> > installed everything, created the raid in the RAID card bios, zeroed
> > it out, compiled the drivers in ubuntu 6.06, inserted the module, and
> > created a partition that was the whole drive (900 gigs). Here are some
> > issues I am having:
> >
> > 1. I go to create the filesystem with "sudo mkfs.ext2 -j /dev/sdb1"
> > and it starts to write the inode tables like normal, but it takes
> > forever! it got about 1/6 of the way through in ~24 hours. I didn't
> > think this was normal since it takes approximately 5 minutes for a 300
> > gig drive. The machine it is on is a P4 2.4 ghz processor with 1 gig
> > of ram.
>
> You don't mention which card you are using, of the several chips that
> are supported by the out-of-tree and propriatry hpt374 driver.
>
> If it is one of the older cards without any actual hardware raid
> functions, you are much better off using the normal linux drivers to
> see the individual drives + linux software raid. The most recent
> release of hpt374 seems to be more than a year old, and the built-in
> software raid has recieved much more testing than any vendor driver.
>
> When you boot (before inserting the hpt374 module), does your kernel
> detect the individual drives?
>
> --
> Will Dyson
> ___________________________________________________________________________
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--
Randy Schmidt
x@altorg.com
267.334.6833
___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
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