Software raid VS hardware raid

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Artem Kuchin wrote:

> Also, not being able to boot if first disk has some error in boot 
> section or just strangly dead is not an option too. However, i was 
> just thinking, if i use gmirror then bios does not know anything about 
> it. I may set both harddisk as boot disk, but if first disk is brain 
> damaged then bios may just stuck trying to boot from it and will not 
> pass boot attempt to the second disk. I don't know, it depends on bios 
> of course. But this seems to be a disadvantage to a software raid.

That's true.  The similar situation with hardware RAID is when the 
controller fails.  The metadata is probably specific to that 
manufacturer and maybe to that model of controller.  It's a good idea to 
get spares, because as Murphy is my witness, in an emergency that 
controller will not be available in the same town, district, country, or 
continent.  More likely it will have been long discontinued, with no 
data migration path.