From owner-freebsd-isp Tue Jun 12 15:25:13 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Received: from velvet.sensation.net.au (serial1-2-velvet-brunswick.sensation.net.au [203.20.114.195]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E271437B401 for ; Tue, 12 Jun 2001 15:25:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from rowan@sensation.net.au) Received: from localhost (rowan@localhost) by velvet.sensation.net.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA16659 for ; Wed, 13 Jun 2001 08:24:55 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from rowan@sensation.net.au) X-Authentication-Warning: velvet.sensation.net.au: rowan owned process doing -bs Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2001 08:24:53 +1000 (EST) From: Rowan Crowe To: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: keeping identical copy of second drive Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Hello, I am just about to take delivery of a new 1RU machine which has identical 20Gb drives, one of them in a removable caddy. Ideally I want the second HD to be a mirror image of the first, either in real time or periodically transferred over. I've had a look at vinum but that seems to be out, as I need to be able to boot from the backup HD immediately - the 2 HD arrangement is mainly to minimise downtime in the event of a mechanical HD failure. BTW, can FreeBSD boot successfully from the second HD if I disable the first in the BIOS and boot -c? I'm not yet familiar with how 4.x works, are the ata drives allocated dynamically or can you specify "probe this drive, and ignore this drive"? I take it that FreeBSD itself can't provide OS level mirroring, ie read one, write both. Is using dd to make a mirror image of the drive contents - whilst in multiuser mode - a waste of time? What are the chances of the file system on the destination drive being corrupted? An occasional single user mode mirror image of the drive with regular cp of files that have changed may also be an option. Any suggestions appreciated... Cheers. -- Rowan Crowe http://www.rowan.sensation.net.au/ Sensation Internet Services http://info.sensation.net.au/ Melbourne, Australia Phone: +61-3-9329-5498 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message