[Ardour-Users] SATA RAID - hardware or software?

[Joe Hartley]

On Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:51:16 +1100
Ross Johnson <Ross.Johnson at homemail.com.au> wrote:
> For example, one of them (Highpoint Technologies for RocketRAID 4320 SAS 
> RAID Controller//) claims: "HighPoint is committed to providing 
> resources that make it easy to develop Linux solutions using our RAID 
> controllers."

I'm not a fan of Highpoint.  I had been using mobos with one of their 
hardware RAID controllers, and at one point their driver stopped compiling,
leaving my server un-upgradable.  The driver was open-source, so if I'd
had less rusty C chops, I might have been able to fix what was wrong, but
I didn't and couldn't.  I had 4 80GB drives that were configured as RAID 10,
and when I blew the mobo, I had to hunt for a direct replacement, and re-
install RH9, the last version supported.  Oh, and their driver caused the
system to always have a minimum load of 1.00.

I ended up getting an external drive, backing everything up to it and 
reconfiguring the drives without the hardware RAID, and setting up a
software RAID.

The Dell controllers I'ved used truly worked at the hardware level, and
never needed an additional driver until you got up to the PERC controllers
and wanted multipathing (multiple controllers to the same disk array).

-- 
======================================================================
       Joe Hartley - UNIX/network Consultant - jh at brainiac.com
 Without deviation from the norm, "progress" is not possible. - FZappa