Linux software RAID on a P200!

[Zach]

I'm going to be trying to install Linux software RAID on a P200 in a week or two. Anyone have experiance with how badly the CPU will be hit?

I'd like to do RAID 0, but I'll settle for JBOD. I ask, because (as far as I know) the IDE RAID card I'll be using doesn't do JBOD, it's an IWill SideRAID/66. It'll be a controller at least, I'll probably RAID 0 two drives with it and use Linux's software raid for the rest. I'm building a home file/print/web server.

Plans:
Real Drive 1: 20GB 7200rpm Maxtor
RAID Drive 2: 2 x 6.4GB 5400rpm Maxtor's, RAID 0 via card
Real Drive 3: Samsung (?) 13GB 5400rpm

I plan on using the entire 12GB from the RAID 0 striping, and 12GB from the other two to make a large partition to be my public folder. Remaining space will be for the OS. I'll probably put all the drives on the IWill controller, I'm not confedent in the Motherboard's IDE ability (HX chipset, I'll have to benchmarg the 6.4GB drives on either controller first).

 

[BOFH]

make sure the Iwill card is supported

the cpu hit is not as bad as some may think. I've seen a 450 with 64mb of ram run all software raid and a lotus notes server w/o too much strain. the drives were all scsi though. it also had a samba server and probably a couple other services going too.

 

[Workin']

Hell, I've had a Pentium 60 with 40MB RAM running Linux software RAID. It was the only way I could get enough disk space amassed to install the OS. I had 4 small, old drives, I striped 'em together into a whopping 1.3GB array. It worked perfectly fine. X Windows was another story....

 

[crohozen]

I thought you couldnt do IDE Hardware strip 0. I thought it was only supported 1. But anyways head over to linuxdoc.org and that will help you with it. But it wont hit your cpu really hard because most stuff you do isnt very hard drive intensive.

 

[Zach]

It's just like the Promise controller, same chip different BIOS (I'd assume, I heard there's fewer options).

Good to hear that a Pentium 60 has done it though. Very promising! I'm kind of anxious, I have to wait for an RMA. My IWill card fried during a BIOS upgrade. I assumed I did something wrong, but I looked over all the instructions several times afterword and saw no problem. Strange. Waiting for that last peice now.......