To "hardware" RAID 5 or software RAID 5

[Gilboa Davara]

On Sat, 2006-12-02 at 17:09 -0800, Ubence Quevedo wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I am redoing my system and have three 250GB hard drives that I was  
> going to try and setup a raid 5 configuration with.  My motherboard  
> is a ASUS K8N4E-Deluxe with both nforce raid and silicon image raid.   
> My question is, would it be best to go with either of the "hardware"  
> raid solutions [I know it isn't truly hardware raid], or should I use  
> Fedora's built in software raid for what I want to accomplish.  I  
> can't afford an LSI or 3Ware raid card, or else I wouldn't be posting  
> this question.
> 
> Has anyone had any problems/horror stories with these particular  
> hardware raid solutions I have mentioned?  On the other hand, has  
> anyone had any particularly bad experience with the Fedora software  
> raid?
> 
> I haven't had a chance to look through the mailing list to see if  
> anyone has asked a similar question, so please don't flame me!
> 
> Thanx, and I look forward to your responses!
> 
> -Ubence
> 

A. your build in RAID is software assisted which means, software RAID
that uses some hardware assistance.
B. Linux' software RAID is much more flexible (you can mix IDE/SATA/SCSI
drives in one set), better tester (both hardware and software wise) and
can be transported from one machine to another. Oh, and it can actually
out-perform hardware RAID controllers, simply because the performance
scales as the host CPU speed improves.

In short, use the Linux software RAID.

- Gilboa