Different Raid channels?

[mxnerd]

Hi:

I'm planning creating a 3-disk raid-5 raid using INTEL matrix storage (ICH9R) and I have some questions.

If I created a 3-disk raid-5 on machine A using SATA channel 0,1 &2, and sometime in the future I moved the disks to machine B (or same machine) for whatever reason (ex. channels went bad, or) which also has Intel matrix storage, but on channel 3,4,5, will this work? Will data corruption occur?

 

[Nothinman]

Depends on how the RAID data is stored and whether it's on the drives or in NVRAM on the controller. But with one of those crappy, onboard softRAID controllers I wouldn't get my hopes up about it working though.

 

[supremelaw]

Buy 2 identical motherboards, and test your plan first.

Claiming special knowledge of the future is one thing (which I try to avoid);
having a disaster plan in place that WORKS is something else again.

How much is your time worth, as compared to a second identical motherboard,
or a 1TB HDD for archival purposes?


Also, 1TB SATA/3G HDDs are a very good investment for archival backups,
particularly if you purchase the "green" version made by Western Digital,
host it in an external eSATA enclosure, and connect it to a controller
that supports "hot swap": this will permit you to switch it OFF when not needed
to prolong its useful life, and only turn it ON when you need to do backups.

We bought Antec's MX-1 external eSATA enclosure for this purpose.


Another variation on this theme is to build a simple file server,
connect it to your RAID 5 machine via a Gigabit LAN, and
again only switch your file server ON if and when you need
to run the backup task. The cheapest Celeron will work just
fine for this purpose, because backups are mostly I/O
requiring very little computation.

There was a time when computer systems were so enormously expensive,
such duplication would have been prohibitive; now, however, hard drives
are dirt cheap, and so are basic PCI-E motherboards, RAM and low-end CPUs.


You can write a simple XP batch file (.bat suffix) that does an incremental
backup of every Windows folder on your RAID 5, e.g.:

xcopy folder1 T:\folder1 /s/e/v/d
xcopy folder2 T:\folder2 /s/e/v/d
...
xcopy folderN t:\folderN /s/e/v/d

where,

"T" = 1TB HDD for archiving


We use XCOPY all the time, and it's very reliable,
even across a Windows network.

And, at about $0.15 - 0.19 per gigabyte at current prices,
these recent 1TB HDDs are a real steal, imho:


http://www.newegg.com/Product/..._-22-136-284-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822136151


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[mxnerd]

Thanks supremelaw, I'll test your idea.

 

[supremelaw]

This may or may not help:

http://blog.wired.com/27bstrok...8/revealed-the-in.html


I cite the above, because my office is currently investigating
certain accomplices suspected of scrambling air traffic control
systems on 9/11, so they clearly would have a motive to retaliate.

Thus, the Moderator here is quite capable of understanding
the need for such testing.

We have a saying in my office that goes like this:

"If you want to catch a marlin, you can use a frilly little jig
that wiggles in the water. If you want to catch a killer shark,
however, you must use live bait." QED


Sincerely yours,
/s/ Paul Andrew Mitchell, Inventor and
Webmaster, Supreme Law Library

All Rights Reserved without Prejudice

 

[mxnerd]

Wow, the BGP security hole is big! Thanks for the link.