[ Thanks to David
Culp for this link. ]
“One of the more exciting, yet least hyped features of the new
2.4 kernel is the built-in facility for handling software RAID
arrays. In the not-so-olden days of the 2.2 series kernels, one had
to manually add a number of specific patches as discussed on
www.linuxraid.org. The new 2.4 kernel distribution includes all of
the latest software RAID enhancements, currently stable at version
0.9. This writing is intended to serve as a tutorial for creating
such software RAID arrays.”
“It should be noted that Linux can handle software RAIDs using
either SCSI or IDE devices (or both, as will be demonstrated in
this tutorial). When creating RAID arrays from IDE devices it is
recommended that one use only one device per IDE controller because
if the controller itself fails, it will most likely take both IDE
disks down with it. Even fault tolerant RAID levels such as 1 and 5
cannot handle losing multiple devices simultaneously, at least not
without administrative intervention.”
“The IDE hardware used for this tutorial’s research included a
Western Digital Caviar 2700 (700MB) disk, a Western Digital Caviar
32500 (2.5GB) disk and a Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE controller. For
the example setup, one disk is located as the master device on the
secondary IDE controller on the motherboard (Tyan Trinity ATX) and
the other is the master device on the first channel of the Ultra66.
These drives are devices hdc and hde under Linux, respectively. For
SCSI hardware, this system consisted of a Quantum XP31070L (1.0GB)
SCSI disk on a Tekram DC-390F controller. The SCSI disk was was
device sda under Linux.”