[Sussex] Hardware Raid Question

[Dave Chapman]

On Saturday 27 August 2005 16:59, Steve Dobson wrote:
> Dave
>
> On Sat, Aug 27, 2005 at 04:43:25PM +0100, Dave Chapman wrote:
> > I have a 64bit ultra 160 raid card and 2 U160 18Gb hard drives and was
> > wondering what sort of configuration would work best.
>
> That depends upon what you want to do.  There is no single answer that
> is best for everyone.
>
> > The card has 2 channels so I was thinking 1 drive on each stripped to
> > make a 36Gb partion.
>
> That would give you a single large partition.  You should get good speed
> performance as the data is spread over both disks equally, but should *one*
> disk die then *all* data is lost.
>
> Mirroring should give slower write times (the data as to be written to
> *both* disks), but reads can be quicker than stripping, as a read request
> can be made of *both* disks but only has to wait for *one* disk to
> complete.
In this case would 1 disk per channel help performance as opposed to both 
disks on 1 channel

>
> > Would I get the best performance using it for /home or /
>
> That depends up the use your system is doing.  If the majority of data
> accesses is the the / partition then that is where you want your fastest
> disks.  However, if most of the data is going to /home (because you're
> editing video for example) then that would be were I place the disks.
/home usually has data for storage rather than manipulation.
So I could have / & /home on the raid partion and a separate disk for stuff 
like mp3's and pictures that are not accessed often.
Say /data
read/write to users