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Considering a real raid controller - some concerns

S

shadowwyvern

Gawd
Joined
Sep 22, 2005
Messages
604
Hello,

I am currently running several drives (4x500GB) in linux software raid 5 (mdadm), but as I am running out of space and my entire array can now by displaced by a single drive ( :( ), I am considering an overhaul. Currently, I am looking at an Areca ARC-1210 controller, but I am concerned about a few things about hardware controllers in general.

Firstly, I am not so worried about extreme performance (mostly a single user application), so can I disable the write-cache such that I can avoid spending another $100 on a battery and still keep my data safe?

Secondly, and most importantly, during my time using software raid I have had some really silly stuff happen to the array - I have had drives just drop out, sometimes several at a time. I even took a drive that was sort of failing and had been out of the array for a couple of days (no changes had been made to the data in that time), and used it to bring the degraded array back online after another drive outright failed. I maintain checksums of almost all the data, and the ability to do these otherwise incredibly illogical operations has saved my data several times. I do not want to lose this protection when moving to a hardware raid. Will the arc-1210 or any other card be as cooperative as linux software raid is when I tell it do just do something, regardless of the risks? I have heard too many stories about multiple drives simultaneously dropping (but not failing) out of people's arrays and causing the whole array to be lost when really it could probably be simply brought back online.

Thanks for your help.
 
Well as for the drives dropping out of the array it could be the TLER issue...do you have WD drives?

I prefer hardware raid over software raid performance is much better and I find it easier to use.
 
I have some WD drives and some samsung drives in the array - none are raid specific. Anyway, doesn't restricting the drive's internal error correction and relaying on the raid to do it instead (the rationale I understand behind TLER) make it mroe likley a drive failure will result in data corruption?

The main thing is that if for whatever reason something like that happens and I have good reason to beleive all data is actually intact, I want a card that will let me force it to try to bring the array back up, not one that just gives up if perfect conditions are not met.
 
With the SCSI raid cards I have used over time they all allow you to mark dead drives as active to bring the array back.. With huge warnings about corrupting data blah blah etc. but they would do it.

I have never tried to do it with a SATA/SAS one, but I'd expect that to be possible
 
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