From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 29 22:38:11 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CB8616A504 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:38:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from scottl@samsco.org) Received: from pooker.samsco.org (pooker.samsco.org [168.103.85.57]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BD0F143CA6 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:37:41 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from scottl@samsco.org) Received: from [192.168.254.11] (phobos.samsco.home [192.168.254.11]) (authenticated bits=0) by pooker.samsco.org (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id kATMbUKm071830; Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:37:36 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from scottl@samsco.org) Message-ID: <456E0BA2.90104@samsco.org> Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 15:37:22 -0700 From: Scott Long User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060910 SeaMonkey/1.0.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Arone Silimantia References: <340522.11027.qm@web58614.mail.re3.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <340522.11027.qm@web58614.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.4 required=3.8 tests=ALL_TRUSTED autolearn=failed version=3.1.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.1 (2006-03-10) on pooker.samsco.org Cc: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: one big array, or a boot array and a (less big) array ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:38:11 -0000 Arone Silimantia wrote: > I have a system with 8 drive bays. I have 8 250 GB > disks. > > I would like to just create one giant raid5 array in > my adaptec hardware raid controller of size 1.75 TB, > and just make my partitions (/, /data, /var) on that > big 2 TB array. > > But I feel like I have heard suggestions on this list > before that one should have a separate array just for > the boot and userland, and that the big monster array > should be separate from that. > > So instead, should I take two of the 8 disks and make > them a mirror, and put boot/userland on there, and > then make a raid5 out of the remaining 6 ? > > Or does it not matter at all ? > > If one is better, why ? Thanks. > If reliability is your highest priority, then you should create (as you describe above) a 2 disk RAID-1, a 5 disk RAID-5, and assign the 8th disk as a global hot-spare. Putting 8 SATA disks into a single enclosure has implications for cooling all of those drives, which in turn has implications for drive life. If I were doing it, this is exactly what I'd do. Scott