Stoopid RAID question

I was under the impression that when you setup a RAID 1 in your mobo’s BIOS, you automatically mirrored everything on both drives.
So when you go to install your OS, say Debian, it only saw a single harddrive.
Or do you need to setup in the software too?
I also thought that if you had a RAID 1 and a hard drive blew, you could just remove the dead drive, reset the BIOS to not-RAID and run off of it, then you inserted an identical blank drive, reset the RAID and you had your mirror again.

Sorta.

There’s a lot of “depends” these days – depends on whether it’s done in software or hardware, what kind of RAID card you use, etc.

Does Debian show one hard drive or a bunch?  Did you use the BIOS to format the RAID?

I would assume that in this case the motherboard has a builtin raid controller so this is hardware raid.  In that case perhaps to Debian there really is only one hard drive - because the mobo is doing all the raid work so Debian doesn’t care.

It would also depend upon how you had the drives physically connected to the mobo and how the mobo implements Raid.

There’s a “depends” joke in there somewhere.

A lot of controllers, even though they are technically hardware, do most of the “heavy lifting” of RAID in software.  If you have one of those controllers, Debian will see two drives.

I know that’s the case on our Alienware SATA RAID.  Ubuntu sees the individual drives.

I guess there’s only one way to find out. I’ll pop in 2 drives and see if Debian sees one or two. If it sees 2, I’m going to go back to a single cuz I’ll never figure out how to setup md’s before I do the install…

well shit that old mobo has SATA but no RAID…

and the Winfast board has the sorta-RAID, Debian sees 2 drives. A software RAID won’t work as I wanted, so I guess its gonna be a single-drive system

I’m waiting for Eso to hijack this thread so I can actually participate. :smiley:

Just curious, herbie, what version of Debian are you using? :smiley:

Phew, I’m not the only one :smiley:

Sarge 3.1, to rebuild a well laid out mailserver config. Last week one blew out (wasnt in server rack yet) from the shit power in this town.
Also had 2 Samsung SATA drives, and I’ve RMA’d 6 in the last week. Samsung’s also pulled out of N America, probably because of that. Used to be good, then in the last few months a rash of bad drives.

Thanks for the reply, man:-)  I know Sarge 3.1 is stable as hell and reliable for servers.  We have the occasional power fluctuation here in PR as well, nothing that has messed up my home LAN…yet. 
I should probably buy a back-up power supply at some point. :smiley:

My overall opinion of APC units is they’re really good for making beeping noises. I like the one’s with software and USB plugs. Eat up another 5% resources to tell you if they’re on or off. About as useful as Weatherbug on everyone’s desktop to tell you what the weather is like right outside the fucking window in their office :smiley:

What you really need is a RAUPS - redundant array of uninterruptible power supplies - so that if one fails you still have others working until you replace the failed one  :imp:

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, I’ll get on that right away. :smiley:  I just need to finish installing slackware on my toaster.  FOST (free open source toast)

I’ll pass on the back-up power supply then, heh-heh:-)
Useless software?  I ain’t running any useless software…I actually do like the weather report icon on my debian/ubuntu boxes. :smiley:

You could always move your computer outta the basement  :stuck_out_tongue:

It isn’t in the basement.  I like the little weather icon in Ubuntu…it is soothing:-)

Ya know I actually miss the young bastard that helped setup my mailservers! At least when he worked, he’d get me all fired up that I wasnt a burnt out old fart, and I’d catch things he missed and vice versa.
Now I’m doing it all myself, its overwhelming and I do feel like a doddering old fool half the time…
it doesn’t help when you’re engrossed in a logfile trying to figure out if you have a postfix, a courier, an sql error or a bad key and some 60 year old woman crashes into the server room, frothing at the mouth and screaming that I’m trying to hack her computer because our server ceritifcate popped up and Norton says she’s under attack, do I think she’s stoopid or something, Norton SAYS SO!
Needless to say by the time I’ve finished explaining to a dried up ld PEBKAC who missed her hormone shots about certificates in one syllable words, and lied thru my teeth that “Windows changes setting all by itself” so I don’t have to come out and say “you fucked with it you lying old bag, Windows doesn’t do shit all by itself”, (gasp for air)
The link timed out and it takes a cup of coffee, two smokes and an hour just how to remember how to ssh again.

Boy I’d like to get a security job and just pretend all day I was John Candy playing the part of a security guard. That would be so cool…

LOL, I loved the anecdote about the dried up old PEBKAC, funny stuff indeed!  Define “old” herbie, I sense you’re a bit younger than I which would make me an antique, burned out fart:-)
Hope you get the server running in short order, man. :smiley: