Software RAID

Joined
Nov 12, 2010
Messages
33
Hi,

Can someone confirm when using software RAID i can use ordinary desktop HDD (WD20EARS). So TLER is not needed.

Thanks.
 
I can confirm this if the software raid is linux software raid and not windows software raid or HW raid.
 
For linux software RAID (mdadm), it is the hardware driver that determines when a drive times out, not mdadm. So, as long as your driver does not decide that a drive has timed out when it goes into deep recovery, you will be fine. Which means you should be fine with most motherboard SATA ports, and also the cheap SIL SATA expansion cards.

In contrast, if you use an HBA that has a short timeout (for example, an Areca card in JBOD mode), then you may have drives dropping out of your array if they go into deep recovery. Which actually is not too bad a result (as long as you do not get two or more at once and you do regular scrubbing), since I usually want to replace any drive that goes into deep recovery.
 
If you are using a hardware raid card with passthrough and linux software raid is it equivalent to running directly off the motherboard ports?
 
If you are using a hardware raid card with passthrough and linux software raid is it equivalent to running directly off the motherboard ports?

Depends on the driver for the hardware RAID card when it is in passthrough mode.

mdadm never times out a drive -- the mdadm developer stated this on the email list

So the only way you will have an mdadm array drop a drive is if the hardware driver times out.
 
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