Jim Ford wrote:
>
> This experience has made me think - it's no great hardship for me, I'm just
> a hobbyist fiddling around with configurations that interest me. But I'd
> think again before jumping into software raid for a serious setup.
Jim,
Don't give up just yet. Your bad experience is not about software
raid. It's about a lack of quality in hardware, firmware, driver, and
a SCSI bus specification inadequate for hot swapping and sudden
selective power failure.
I have only good things to say about the Linux Raid software. It
serves it's purpose very well for me. There are a few things to have
in mind though. If you want to run disk mirroring, have your disks on
separate adapters for electrical separation. If you want to run
raid-5, use a hotswap backplane if possible. To make your life easier
still, as mentioned by Marc Schaefer, grab a couple of SYM53c8xx
derivates if you can, and use them with the ncr53c8xx or sym53c8xx
driver. That combination is know to behave well in most situations.
If you're stuck with your current hardware, do try it out some more,
but don't pull the plug like that! ;-)
rgrds, Tomas
