Re: [gentoo-user] Software RAID vs "Fake" RAID

[Hazen Valliant-Saunders]

Ok,

1. Motherboard Raid is often "Fake Raid"
2. In Gentoo the Software Raid fucntions for Linux are probably faster than
your motherboard's
3. Having had and seen issues with mother board raid I'd suggest using the
mdtools. Since there is a FAR LARGER support base; that way if somthing goes
awry you'll have a far larger pool of knowledge to draw from.

When Considering Raid always look to see if you have a MB that has it's own
XOR implemented in silicon, these are a little pricy but they are the
"Engine" that speeds up the whole checksumming process.

Server Motherboards and high end workstations will have integrated RAID
controllers from repudible providers (LSI, Adaptec, AMI...) and even those
break down and forget configuration's some times.

If you are going to do a whole bunch of storage on the cheap the software
raid is fine, and if you have a quad core you won't even notice the
overhead.

On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>wrote:

> On Monday 27 April 2009 14:18:39 Yahya Mohammad wrote:
> > Hi list,
> >
> > I'm setting up a new desktop machine with RAID 0. The motherboard I
> > bought supports the so-called "Fake" RAID, which offloads most of the
> > processing to the system CPU. What are the pros and cons of using this
> > as opposed to  pure software RAID?
>
> There are no pros that I have ever seen and plenty of cons. Notably -
> performance sucks.
>
> You are almost always better off using software RAID. Big plus - you can
> actually configure it to get a result closer to what you want as opposed to
> what the firmware manufacturer wants you to have.
>
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>


-- 
Hazen Valliant-Saunders
IT/IS Consultant
[phone]