On Monday 15 December 2008 18:48:26 Grant wrote: > > Grant, > > I have no direct experience but I was asking some questions on this > > list recently. One disadvantage of software RAD would be that > > partition management tools like parted may not (or WILL not) do > > resizing on a software RAID but will (or should!) on hardware RAID. If > > you go with software RAID and later decide that a partition needs to > > be moved, resized, etc., then you may not be able to do it. > > > > I would suggest finding a good, if inexpensive, hardware RAID card > > or possibly play a bit with the RAID stuff on your motherboard to see > > if parted can work with it. > > What makes motherboard RAID such crap? I don't think I'll ever want > to resize partitions. Mine are very simple root, boot, and swap and > I've never wanted to change them. Is it slow, unreliable?
Motherboard RAID tends to be one of those things where corners are cut. It is not true RAID either in low-end boards - it is two drives that are always visible anyway and you use some crappy "driver" (that no-one can debug) to form a *software* RAID, usually very limited in scope and usually very limited in performance. So, if you are going to end up using some vendor's crappy driver, you might as well use a proper software RAID driver that comes with the kernel, that can be debugged, that is a known quantity and that is proven to have excellent performance. In-kernel software RAID also has an impressive array of working features, and often out-performs even decent hardware RAID cards. Which isn't to say that hardware RAID is a bad thing, there are some spectacular cards out there. They do tend to be pricey though. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
