[Wylug-help] Backup server, IDE+SATA and RAID

[John Hodrien]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2008, Gary Stainburn wrote:

> Hi folks.
>
> I'm looking at this again, but never got a reply.  Anyone got any comments?

I've not done this, but here goes.

>> Can anyone see any pitfalls with added one new 500GB SATA drive to the
>> system, with possible a second one at a later date?

Pitfall #1.  500G doesn't always equal 500G, but since you've got /boot on at
least two of the disks this won't be a problem.  Otherwise you can get bitten
when your new disk is a couple of blocks smaller than your old disks.  That's
a real pisser.

>> Surely Linux will just see it as another block device and allow me to add
>> it to the RAID array.

Yup.

>> If the new drive(s) are of a different size to the original 3, how will
>> this affect the RAID and it's performance?

If it's big enough, there's no problem.  If it's too big, you'll waste space,
since each member of the RAID5 set has to be the same size.  Just make a
partition that is identical in size to the existing member partitions and get
to work.

http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/Main_Page

Especially http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/Growing

jh

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