One thing that does annoy me about RAID is the absolute need for matched drives.
You mean 'hardware raid'
On linux sw raid you can mix *any* block devices:
* PATA
* SATA (1+2)
* USB
* Firewire
* MFM (!) (I powered up a 1988 Amstrad 2086 MFM drive and read it just before retiring my last ISA-slotted machine last year - I should have RAIDed it for the hell of it
)
* RAM disks
* Network block devices
Not exactly 'matched'
(although I am dubious about including external drive(s) in a RAID.)
On that subject does any one know if any of the Linux distributions treat RAID as a first class citizen yet ?
Last time I installed a RAID box 18 months ago none of the distributions made RAID easy during installation. I tried to take a look at the latest Ubuntu installer the other day to see if things had improved, but it kept crashing as it loaded the kernel on the two machines I tried it on.
I'm pretty sure it's first-class on Debian and most others for 'ancillary' filesystems (ie not / & friends). I am surprised at your experience.
I thought I got an option to have a mirrored / last time I did a Debian install - and ISTR SUSE just made it first class as /.
The issues are primarily around the bootloaders which need to grab the kernel and initram from a BIOS accessible drive... not that easy from a RAID0,5,6,10 etc. Not too bad from a mirror.
Roll on the days when PCs arrive with a boot CF drive...
Archeon - on another note - are you ever going to be affected byt the MS 'copyright check' type stuff? ISTR they try to identify copyright material in the background - wasn't that an issue with the VISTA 'never-ending delete' problem? I know very little about the Windows side of the world (long may that continue!)
Anyhow - feel free to yell if you need help on getting it going...
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