I am wondering if Linux software Raid 1 is OK.
Because I wonder if 2x40g harddrive with this may be better for me than a 80g drive.
Any comments for newbie?
Thanks,
Jonner

Backups are always very important. Even if you are not going for the RAID solution, you might consider just doing daily backups to the secondary drive. For standard backups, you can retrieve the data as raw formats. Of course, a remote backup solution like DiskSync would be better but if that is not the option, local disk to disk backup would do the trick.

I have not used the Linux software RAID solution so I cannot say anything about it.

linux'es software raid is ok, its not the nicest solution, but for the most part it does.

just watch out for your bootloader +software raid thoguh

I've considered the raid versus backups situation and decided in favor of daily/weekly backups. With raid, you have 2 copies of the current data, but if the disk is corrupted because of bad ram/software failure/user error, then you only have 2 copies of the current corrupted disk. With backups, you can at least recover the data from a prior days backup. Also, with something like DiskSync, you could backup the mailboxes and critical data such as orders on an hourly basis. I would also suggest that if you or any of your customers are running a shopping cart, that it be setup to e-mail an encrypted copy of each transaction to a mailbox on a separate machine as soon as the transaction occurs. That way you can re-construct any orders since the last daily or hourly backup.


BTW, I have a celeron 2.4 with the 2 x 40g harddrive option and there are a few things you should be aware of. Please note that Mine was ordered in August 2004, so things may have changed on the drives used and the default format.

- The disks on mine are ST340014A, ATA DISK drive with 2 MB cache. not 8 MB. That may not be the case now.

- The /home partition with the default format was only 17 GB

- I asked sales last week about upgrading the secondary hard drive to a larger drive and found that you get no credit at all for the 40 GB drive. Instead of paying the difference between a secondary 40 GB drive and a secondary 80 GB drive ($10), you would pay the full monthly price for the 80 GB drive ($40). After getting the initial response in the RFQ, I specifically asked and the response from sales was :shock:

-- David

RAID should not be considered a backup solution. All it does is help in the event of a drive failure. It does not secure data by any means. Ok carry on now.

Yup, most definitely. That's why apart from RAID, I do have the DiskSync solution

RAID does nothing to stop filesystem corruption, buster partitions, or any problems with the data on the drive itself.

Nor does it protect from rm -rf /*

Well, if need the 80gb secondary drive and they wouldn't blunge with the $10 or so pricing, you might be better off with say doing the one-time payment for the 80gb drive. I did that and for $150/one time, you should recover the cost in 4 months time.