On 2025-03-06 9:29 p.m., Tim via users wrote:
On Thu, 2025-03-06 at 14:08 +0000, Barry wrote:
Whst is fake raid? I had assume that term just means software raid in the bios.
RAID done by the motherboard, either completely on its own, or requiring specialist drivers. And is depending heavily on the motherboard for its existence, and quite likely to use the drives in a manner incompatible with anything else (such as having to replace the motherboard, or having to pull out a drive to read it on something else).
The same can probably be said for drives plugged into a daughterboard into the motherboard. And I dare say for external boxes full of hard drives that appear like mass storage to the computer.
I'd say the most foolproof scheme is a bunch of drives plugged into multiple drive ports on the motherboard, and having the OS create a RAID out of them.
While some will argue about the potential speed differences between the various schemes, and others will argue it's not really that significant, the original poster's purpose for the system would suggest reliability is the main criteria. They're not doing high-speed data processing (such as rendering 3-D raytracing or high def video editing).
Hardware RAID cards are expensive, have ludicrously expensive batteries, and have no concept of empty sectors or filesystems and so have to methodically replicate every sector blindly. This is a problem, especially when doing a recovery. Software RAID using JBOD and a journaling filesystem that can do RAID (ZFS, BTRFS, a couple of others) is usually somewhat faster in read and normally hundreds of times faster than hardware RAID in recovery. The only edge case where hardware RAID might even compete is when the array is near or at 100% full and there are no sectors where a software RAID can do something more intelligent.