On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:10 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
> What I don't understand is what does the linux dmraid4-5 module do?

I don't know.  Let's ask Google.

It looks like "dmraid" stands for device mapper raid.  There's some info here:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/RAID/NVRAID_with_dmraid

It's a method for Linux to read data from a drive to allow it to
automatically configure a software raid.

> Is any maintenance of the array handled by the dmraid4-5 module?

It looks like it.

> If maintenance of the array is required, i.e. synchronization for example,
> how often should this be done?

The raid property must be maintained whenever a disk write occurs.
With software raid, this means that the operating system must actively
distribute/copy writes according to the desired raid configuration.

Raid rebuilding is something else, when one drive is degraded and
needs to be completely rewritten.

Raid verification is optional, it's just checking that everything is ok.

The point is, if Linux can do a disk write and maintain the raid
property, then it can do all of the other things as well.  You should
not ever need to boot into Windows.

> A few parties have mentioned Linux software RAID.  I strongly suspect that
> I would need to give up the dual boot scenario to do that

When using software raid, I recommend raiding partitions, not drives.
This is much more flexible, and does not preclude dual booting.
Basically, you let linux handle raiding the linux partitions, let
Windows handle raiding the windows partitions, and don't let either of
them touch the other's drives.

It also allows you to have multiple raid levels on the same set of
drives.  (e.g. two drives where part of them are raid1 and part of
them are raid0.)

Eric

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