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What Kind Of Software RAID Are You Running?
ErikZ asks: "Lately, I'm having issues with my RAID. Specifically, closed source drivers for my RAID card that only support Red Hat 9. So I've decided to Ebay the card, and try to figure out how to turn 4 SATA drives into a software driven RAID 5 setup. Yes, I know I'll lose all the data, and I'm not worried about it. Finding a 4 port (or more) SATA controller card, that's well supported under Linux, has been difficult. Everyone wants to slap on their own RAID chip and charge you another 100$ for the pleasure. Where can a guy get a highly recommended, well supported, 4 port SATA card for Linux? The Rocket 1540 cards have vanished off the face of the earth. There are a few motherboards out there that have 4+ SATA connectors on them, but they also add RAID and some other cutting edge features that aren't well supported under Linux.
So, I thought I'd try another route and ask Slashdot: What are you using for your Linux software RAID needs? What do you suggest?"
If it's not included, the full package is mdadm. There are a number of tutorials on the web for it. It's easy to set up, and easy to run (just ignore it). I don't remember if it can work with hot swapping (I don't need that yet), but I'm using it on several systems. I set it up, and I haven't had to worry about it since.
When I first got it, I stuffed a lot on the raid drive, disabled it, wiped out one disk, and re-activated the raid. It rebuilt it and worked fine.
I asked this question on a Debian (or Debian based) user list at a time when a lot of experienced admins were around, and overall the feeling was that there was no need to go hardware and the software raid would do the job.