Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:24:28 +0000 From: Robert Slade <bsd@bathnetworks.com> To: Joe Auty <joe@netmusician.org> Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: your advice on vinum, RAIDs Message-ID: <1135873468.5677.8.camel@lmail.bathnetworks.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <336CE4EB-C1F3-4C6E-8057-1F068BFEE3BA@netmusician.org> References: <B302EFD3-19ED-43B5-B4AD-07BDCF9273A9@netmusician.org> <1135847660.2006.14.camel@lmail.bathnetworks.co.uk> <336CE4EB-C1F3-4C6E-8057-1F068BFEE3BA@netmusician.org>
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On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 15:05, Joe Auty wrote: > On Dec 29, 2005, at 4:14 AM, Robert Slade wrote: > > > On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 06:09, Joe Auty wrote: > >> Hello, > >> > >> I've been considering buying another hard drive for my FreeBSD > >> machine, and building a RAID with my current hard drive so that both > >> drives are treated as one. > >> > >> Do any of you have experience in this area? Is this advisable? I'm > >> assuming I'd be looking at creating a RAID-5? Can this be done > >> without reformatting my current drive? Does this setup work well? Do > >> you have any general advice for me? I need to know if there is risk > >> involved here. > >> > >> > >> > >> Thanks in advance! > > > > Joe, > > > > It depends on what you need to do. If you just want data integrity > > then > > you need raid 1 - mirroring and GEOM is your friend. There is a good > > section in the Handbook on setting a GEOM raid 1 without formatting > > the > > original drive. > > > > > > If you are also looking for more drive space, then raid 5 gives a > > measure of both. > > > > In both cases, the warning of backing up the system first applies. > > > > > Hmmm..... What I need is more drive space. Should I look at GEOM > rather than vinum? Do you know whether the drives would need to be > reformatted in order to setup the RAID? > > I'll definitely heed your advice on backing up the drive first! Joe, I if you are not worried about integrity, I would leave Raid alone. To add more space, just the drive and mount it. I have just added more space on a machine by mounting a new drive as /data and copying the home dirs across then relinking the /home dir to home. Have a look at: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/disks-adding.html Rob
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