Re: [tlug] Setting up a RAID 1 with Ubuntu (Was: Hard Drive Failure)

[Jason Hall <jason@example.com>]

> As long as one has a drive that is identical in specifications, might it 
> not be a good idea to not have identical brands?

Identical drives is more of an issue with hardware raid - where the
controller handles the I/O. Generally, hardware mirroring means an exact
duplicate between the drives - partitions and all.

Software raid is generally more flexible in allowing a mirror (or other
RAID configuration) across selected partitions (though obviously not on
the same physical drive). This allows for a couple features that could
fit with your needs.

1) The drives can be different (even different sizes) as you could
mirror individual partitions rather than the entire drive.

2) Not all partitions have to be in the raid. For example, you could
created swap or /tmp partitions outside of the raid.


As an example say drive A is 40G, drive B is 60G. There could be:
- 10G of system partitions mirrored across both drives
- a 30G home partition mirrored across both drives
- 20G left on drive B for swap, /tmp & downloads etc - stuff that is OK
to lose.

- Jason