[BlueOnyx:02868] Re: raid 10

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Jeff,

> I guess it is RAID 0+1. I think I saw a volume group in webmin which  
> must be the strip of the pair of two 340 GB disks.

Yeah.

> I guess my question would be, will it rebuild automatically if I have  
> a drive failure?

Yes, it will rebuild automatically. Or you can force the rebuild by running 
/etc/init.d/mdchk.

> Will I know which drive to replace? You wouldn't  
> happen to have a good how-to for that? 

The GUI won't tell you which disk tray to pull, no. But it tells you which 
disk (example: sdc) is defective. /etc/init.d/mdchk also provides that info.

Based on that you should be able to find out which physical drive to replace, 
which - I admit - may not be 100% straightforward. If you're lucky the SATA 
connectors on the board are labled. 

> Maybe a SATA RAID card is a good idea... I'm not too worried about the  
> overhead on my hobby server, but it runs my mail and I chose RAID for  
> failsafe...

A typical SATA RAID card also gives you a better performance, as it takes 
stress off the CPU and provides a slightly better IO throughput. 

I like software RAID for the flexibility and simplicity. But for more than two 
disks hardware RAID is slightly more compelling. For more than four disks I'd 
consider hardware RAID as a must have item.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber