Subj : To RAID or not to RAID?
To   : All
From : Angus Mcleod
Date : Sun Aug 15 2004 11:56 pm

Here's a thought for my Music Server machine:

Do I actually want to configure the drives as a RAID array?  Or do I simply
have two partitions and periodically snapshot/copy one to the other?  Thing is,
I won't be _eriting_ to the array that often.  I might be _reading_ data off
the array all day as I listen to music, but I won't be _writing_ to the array
other than when I acquire a new album, which certainly isn't every/all day.

So is there any advantage to configuring two separate partitions and adding a
copy to partition #2 as part of the usual rip/encode/dbinsert process?  I'm
thinking you could spin down one disk and run only one and at some time you
could spin up the second disk, unmount/mount and spin down the first disk so as
to spread the wear'n'tear.  Make the changeover a cron-job at 5:30 AM, & maybe
an MD5 comparison of all disk objects so as to spot any differences that need
to be eliminated.

Or should I use plain old RAID?  

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