Subj : To RAID or not to RAID?
To   : Belly
From : astark
Date : Wed Aug 18 2004 09:20 pm

-=> Belly wrote to Angus Mcleod <=-

 Be>   Re: To RAID or not to RAID?
 Be>   By: Angus Mcleod to All on Sun Aug 15 2004 10:56 pm

 > 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
 > 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 arra
 > 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
 > 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
 > to spread the wear'n'tear.  Make the changeover a cron-job at 5:30 AM, & may
 > an MD5 comparison of all disk objects so as to spot any differences that nee
 > to be eliminated.
 >
 > Or should I use plain old RAID?

 Be> Pros and cons to each...

 Be> RAID: easy backup in case of drive failure, no maintenance (file
 Be> copying) required... but if you accidentally rm -rf then both copies
 Be> are gone. in most RAID setups you also gain throughput over a single
 Be> drive also... this is really not an issue in a server used by a single
 Be> user, though.

 Be> Seperate copies: recovery possible from accidental
 Be> deletion/corruption... you have to synchronize the files occasionally,
 Be> but that can be done via cron jobs and scripts. If you do this, I
 Be> recommend using rsync... it it made to sync over networks, but you can
 Be> use it locally. works great.

 Be> My home network spans 4 houses on the street... I guess that's a
 Be> Neighborhood Area Network? :) Anyway, we used a nightly rsync running
 Be> from cron to synchronize MP3s between servers in diferent houses for
 Be> backup purposes... Worked well. It took a while to get the initial 80GB
 Be> sync finished, but after that only changes are transmitted.


Id be interested in any info you can give me on how you did this. (os, scripts,
etc). 
Anything you can give me would rock. You can reply via email if need be...

astark@tdmonline.com
Arthur Stark / astark@tdmonline.com
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