Software Raid 5 (FC5)

[Gilboa Davara]

On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 20:38 -0600, Ian Pilcher wrote:
> Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > Forgive my stupid question... but why on earth would you want to setup
> > 10 different RAID 5 array?
> 
> I'm not the OP, but one possible reason is to preserve the ability to
> add additional drives later.  My music collection originally lived on a
> set of RAID-1 devices on two drives, then RAID-5 on three drives, and
> now RAID-5 on four drives.  Only enough free space to copy *one* of the
> md devices is required.
> 
> Using LVM to create a single virtual device out of the md devices may
> make sense, *if* you trust pvmove, which the LVM HOWTO claims doesn't
> work.

I *don't*. When I add drives to a RAID5 array, I back-up -everything-,
delete -everything- and rebuild the array from scratch.
Doing work on RAID live array (with no backup), -even- if you are
working on another partition is a big no-no in my book. Single
mistake... single twisted IDE/SCSI/SATA cable tends to be a career
altering mistake ;) 

Gilboa