Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- From: DWalker <none@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 13:44:04 -0800
"Shenan Stanley" <newshelper@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:eQnKJhbIIHA.5860@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
Software RAID) is a horrible performance idea and I wouldn't trust my
data with one either. I equate it with the driver overlay
applications - if something goes wrong - it will go horribly wrong.
It is just for backup - a little scary to me would be using any
software RAID. I would never recommend a software RAID unless there
was just no alternative (and as there is - inexpensive hardware
RAID...)
This is all purely side-bar stuff, but...
What is it you are hoping to do with a software-based mirror RAID?
If it is data protection from yourself/the more-likely software issues
(virus, trojans, worms, malware, slip of the human fingers, etc) -->
unless you have a time delay on the mirroring, that's going to fail
miserably. If it is from hardware failure - it may very well have you
going in short order - but in my experience, if it is software based,
it's almost as long as it would have been if you had instead fllowed
good backup rituals and restored from those. *grin* Hardware based
mirroring - you'll be back up pretty quickly - but I still recommend a
good backup scheme as opposed to the mirroring. Software RAID of ANY
kind just does not compare with hardware RAID in performance, ease of
use or reliability.
I realize it may seem like a bad investment - but a simple RAID card
will do things for you well worth the money. Also, backups are better
protection against the most common failures than a MIRROR RAID will
be. The only situation that MIRROR RAIDs win is a hardware failure on
the first disk(s) - then you can bring up the other set relatively
painlessly. In my experience - during that time, something
software-wise will be lost in the meantime. Those MTBFs are just huge
with hard disk drives. ;-)
Well, it was set up that way for disk crashes. We have had some disk
crashes, and the software RAID saved us. (We also have online nightly
backups to other disks, and offline nightly backups to tape.)
The server is only used to store some user files, and we have not
NOTICED any performance problems at all using Windows 2000 server's
built-in software mirroring. (Although "regenerating a mirror set" does
take a while on a 200 GB partition.)
Using the NOW-inexpensive hardware RAID is certainly a good idea, but
hardware RAID was expensive when we put this server together 5-7 years
ago.
The boot disk was generously sized at 4 GB years ago when Windows 2000
first came out, back when the mentality was that anything over cylinder
1024 or whatever might not be bootable, with fresh memories of the
Windows NT 4 days when there were other limits that you might or might
not see depending on your setup. Even though those limits didn't apply
to us any more, I thought 4GB would be huge for a boot partition. (And
it was, at the time.) Nowadays, I often make 20 GB boot partitions.
(I'm not a fan of chopping up a large disk into many smaller partitions;
I figure that organizing data in folders is fine, and you don't have to
guess which "partition" will need to grow more than any other in the
future.)
Now that 500 GB SATA disks are $110, we don't worry so much about how to
partition things.
But thanks for the comments; I agree about inexpensive hardware RAID
that is now available.
David Walker
.
- References:
- Dynamic to basic disk?
- From: DWalker
- Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- From: Shenan Stanley
- Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- From: DWalker
- Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- From: Shenan Stanley
- Dynamic to basic disk?
- Prev by Date: Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- Next by Date: Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- Previous by thread: Re: Dynamic to basic disk?
- Next by thread: Shock Wave Player
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
