[plug] RAID newbie

[Craig Ringer]

> Dream machine: Intel D875PBZ - "with Intel® RAID Technology"
> http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bz/index.htm
> Disappointment from tech details burried deep down: "Note: The ICH5-R
> provides support for RAID 0 and RAID boot in Windows XP only."

Come to think of it, the Promise card might be quite fine in RAID 1 (the 
only sane RAID mode on cards that don't support RAID 5) so long as it 
doesn't use any kind of funny on-disk format (unlikely for RAID 1).

So maybe it'll be fine for RAID 1, so long as the drives can be removed 
and read happily in another controller card. I'd try this before deploying.

I reseve my real distrust of semi-hardware RAID for RAID 0.... but then, 
  I would never use RAID 0 for data I cared about at all anyway, so 
perhaps it's kind of redundant. I also wouldn't even consider them for 
RAID 5, but they never seem to support that anyway.

If your disks are OK on another controller as well as RAID 0 on the 
promise card, then maybe it's an OK way to go.

I'll keep my real hardware RAID though.

Craig Ringer