[Scottish] Software RAID & LVM

[Craig Perry]

Hi all,

I'm setting up a new server at home. It's just a small network, 2x WinXP
Desktops, 2x Laptops, one XP one dual boot WinME/Debian. God it's enough to
get added to Bill Gates' Crimbo card list! Anyways this server will be
running SAMBA/NFS to turn it into a simple NAS. It will also do IP MASQ etc.
but i'm happy with setting that up, i've already got that :)

It will have 2x 60Gb and 1x4Gb drive to begin with, but this will be
extended at a later date as needs increase/cash flow starts flowing again. I
will add PCI IDE controllers to accomodate the extra drives. The 4Gb drive
will have probably linux (possibly jumping ship to freebsd), and i want to
set the other two up in some form of LVM/software RAID setup.

I want to have the redundancy of RAID mirroring, but i'm not 100% how it all
works, do i need LVM as well? I just want to pool all the storage together
into one big drive i can mount on /usr/share then share this over NFS/SAMBA.

Any general comments/suggestions?

Regards Craig.