hw vs sw raid (was Re: [TriLUG] RAID newbie question...)

[Lisa Lorenzin]

> the problem with relying on dual hard drives to back up your data is 
> that no matter how you set it up (HW raid, SW raid, backup partition, 
> etc) is that both disks are still in the same box, and if any other 
> component on that box should fail (power supply, bad ram, blown 
> capacitor, whatever) you're screwed.  and a major problem like a 
> lightning strike could easily wipe out both disks at the same time, 
> leaving you with nothing.

not to mention a clue failure of the 'rm -rf foo *' variety...
 
> my advice is to use a seperate machine to do backups.  stick a 120gb 
> disk and a 10/100 nic in an old pentium box and use rsync or nfs to 
> backup your primary machine(s).  since old hardware is very cheap the 
> cost difference is minimal, you can backup multiple machines more 
> easily, and your data is safer and accesible even if disaster should 
> strike.

i'm finally getting serious about backups here, and my current plan
involves the belt AND the suspenders:

* rebuild my desktop box with two 120gb mirrored drives, set up so that if
one drive fails, i can boot from the remaining drive alone

* move my existing two 80gb drives (and possibly also a tape drive and
cdrw) into an older box; using that as a backup server, make weekly full
and daily incremental backups

i have the same question that ken has - given the relative slowness of 
ide, and since i'm only doing this for redundancy, not for performance,
is there any reason to buy an ide raid card?  or is software raid 
sufficient for this kind of use?

						lisa

-- 
lisa lorenzin  |  lorenzin at 1000plus.com  |  http://www.1000plus.com/lisa/
of what avail is an open eye if the heart is blind? - solomon ibn gavirol