Getting started the hard way with RAID

[Avi Greenbury]

Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> >> The hard part is that I no longer have that RAID controller, just
> >> the two drives.  The controller was a 64-bit PCI card, and the new
> >> mobo cannot handle it.
> >
> > Have you googled for the model and manufacturer of that RAID
> > controller?
> 
> Not yet, but I will.  It was a 3ware 9550SX controller.

Generally, you will need a new, working, raid card of at least the same
family, sometimes the same model, to get the data off the disks. This
is the huge disadvantage to hardware (or even fake) raid, and why
generally I'd just stick with software raid unless I can have another
raid card on standby. Dmraid's worth a look; I've never had cause to
try it.

> The controller was my first experiment with RAID, and I've decided it
> was a bad fit to my situation.  As a hobbyist, I don't have spare
> drives to drop in when one goes down, I don't have a spare motherboard
> to support the controller, or a spare controller, when things go
> south.  Not having used this stuff before, it hadn't occurred to me to
> worry if the on-disk format was proprietary, but now I see the
> problem.

Well, you only need raid if you need high-availability. In the vast
majority of cases, the additional disk in a raid pair can be put to
better use as a backup.

-- 
Avi