[plug] Don't do that!

[Bernd Felsche]

On Thursday 16 September 2004 16:42, Xander D Harkness wrote:
> Cameron Patrick wrote:
> >Xander D Harkness wrote:
> >>PCI - IDE cards are pretty cheap.
> >
> >I disagree; they're relatively low volume items and you can buy a
> >complete motherboard for about the same cost as a PCI IDE controller.

> What you miss here is that if you use a different controller for each
> hard drive on basic / cheap mother boards that you are referring to they
> only have two controllers, which means you are limited to RAID 0 or RAID
> 1.

Traditionally, one mirrors across channels, but can stripe on the
same one. The reason is self-evident: performance.

But given that the box will not be doing a lot of writing to disc
once deployed, mirroring on the same channel is not as evil as it
first appears.

PLUG is of course free to reconfigure the machine once the committee
become the custodians. (There'll be a ceremony and paper-tape
parade.) I'll only be taking it to the stage where get it to prove
an NNTP service of the PLUG list to authenticated users.

> A more expensive motherboard may have four controllers on but these are
> usually much more expensive and to get a PCI card for about $10 allowing
> RAID 5 and many more disks.

> My EPIA board does have a PCI slot and I have a dual riser card in it.

Heavens; two drives are enough for mirroring. Power consumption and
noise must also be considered.

-- 
/"\ Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia
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