Software RAID guidance

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Robert Fitzpatrick wrote:

>I have an old NT4 PIII here that has a pair Adaptec Array1000 Family
>controllers with 2 pairs of identical drives on one of them (2 IBM 9GB
>and 2 Seagate 35GB). From what I googled, *nix does not support the
>controller, so I have removed the RAID arrays and loaded FreeBSD 6.0
>onto the two IBM drives. Now, I wanted to mirror the other two for data
>and looking for guidance as to whether it is first of all suited for
>software RAID and if so, CCD or vinum. I am contemplating vinum because
>the handbook mentions CCD is when cost is the important factor and for
>me, is reliability. What would someone suggest? If vinum, one thing I
>don't quite understand is do I create the partitions to be used in the
>device? There doesn't seem to be a man for gvinum and the link to it in
>the handbook section 19.6.1 is broken.
>  
>
Just to give you another option.  You can support RAID1 using atacontrol 
to just make two disk into a RAID.  Plenty of posts in the archive with 
more info.  As an outsider (i.e. without any RAID) this option always 
seemed the simplest.  No doubt other with experience can tell you the 
relative merits of atacontrol vs gmirror.

--Alex