[Tfug] RAID on LVM (was Re: FreeBSD vs. Linux)

[Ronald Sutherland]

On Nov 30, 2007 7:13 PM, John Gruenenfelder <johng at as.arizona.edu> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 02:27:35PM -0700, Claude Rubinson wrote:
> >For ways of simulating a raid drive failure, see:
> >http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.3
> >
> >C.
>
> This link, though, gives some good ideas to use with the raidtools.  I'm
> going
> to give it a try.  Thanks for the link.
>
>
Good link.. I've been using raidtools and now mdadmin over the years,
however I keep it simple, as in raid 1 (mirror). I've had a system break
with hardware raid, and I've had problems with software raid. I was not able
to find the same raid hardware again after it broke (so I lost that), but
I've had better luck with software raid. I think that CVS/SVN(/rsync?) is a
better backup system than RAID alone, since the important data is duplicated
in other places (assuming other computers are using the data).

Most of the HD's that have failed for me were on test computers at the
company I worked for. This was back in 2000-2002 time, I had about 6
machines running Win 2k/MS SQL/IIS (and some other crap like VB test
programs). They were used to test electronics products from assembly lines.
Some how a virus got into the SQL server and as it replicated it worked the
HD very bad/wrong, all these drives failed within a few years. I have had
some other drives fail also, I've never seen one just stop they have always
given me warning (things like slow, noise, hot, random boot up fail). I
would not expect most people to know the difference between warm and hot,
but electronics is good if warm and bad if hot, unfortunately I have no idea
how to make that concept into something that the scientific method can test.

A little bit about pitfalls and traps: Linux and BSD are full of them, and
if you are reading stuff from a fanboy its just as bad as anything from
MS/Apple/Sun... They are trying to infect you with there ideas. BUT, and
this is a big *BBUUTT* (hehe :-) there are people in BSD and Linux who will
tell it as it is... or are there... hmm... I may be just be another fanboy
trying to infect others with my ideas :-)