From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 20 19: 5:15 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from malkav.snowmoon.com (machine-126-237.cdcsd.k12.ny.us [208.20.126.237]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 691A214D7F for ; Wed, 20 Oct 1999 19:05:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jaime@malkav.snowmoon.com) Received: (qmail 68773 invoked by uid 1001); 21 Oct 1999 02:05:10 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 21 Oct 1999 02:05:10 -0000 Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 22:05:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Jaime Kikpole To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RAID systems Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I've been wrestling with a Netfinity 5000 and a DPT SmartCache IV for a few weeks now and am near giving up. Yesterday I thought that I had a break through, but I may have been wrong. Specifically, I could boot from an external hard drive and then FreeBSD could see the SmartCache's RAID-5 array. (This was on a minimal install with the default partitioning given by the disk label editor.) Once I saw that, I installed a full OS with custom partitioning (/var was big, /var/log and /tmp were added, etc.). Now it won't boot anymore. Does anyone have a guess as to why it wouldn't boot with a more fine-tuned disk label? BootEasy was claiming that there was no /boot/loader or /kernel. Also, once I restarted, I couldn't figure out what settings to put in the SmartCache's BIOS in order to make it post the array as a "drive" instead of a "disk". I'm not sure if I ever managed to boot from the external SCSI hard drive and have the SmartCache array posting as a drive, to be honest. But their tech support line said that it would be necessary. While I'm asking, can anyone suggest a decent, affordable (under $4000, preferably under $2000) RAID-5 system that connects to a SCSI port? I have a Compaq desktop computer acting as the mail/web/DNS/DHCP/etc. server for my job's at the moment and would like to see it have some redundancy. (Its running on an IDE hard drive right now. Do _that_ on NT! *grin*) I'm guessing that the easiest way to improve that system is to add a SCSI card and plug a RAID-5 external system into that card. Does that sound reasonable? Thanks in advance, Jaime To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message