[LINK] Leave on, or turn off?

[Kim Holburn]

On 2006/Nov/30, at 4:17 PM, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> Stewart Fist wrote:
>> Thanks to all for the rash of anecdotes -- they have helped me  
>> clarify the
>> question, although I'm still dubious about many of the answers.
>> Do people accept that a manufacturer's MTBF is something devised  
>> by rigorous
>> testing rather than a figure invented by the only mathematically- 
>> literate
>> spin-doctor in the PR department.
> ...
> to help you clarify your questions...
>
> the idea of disks failing sells mirror/redundant systems....

Hard disks *will* fail.  The only question is when.

> sometimes it is the redundancy mechanism that is less reliable than  
> the disks themselves...

Everything you add makes the machine more complex and adds points of  
failure.  Over the years I have generally found that hardware raid  
was a really bad idea for a number of reasons (including:
. adding an extra hardfware point of failure,
. having non-standard disk formats for when you have to reconstruct,
. finding that hardware raid is much, much slower than the original  
disks.

Software raid on the other hand is not so bad.




--
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph/F: +61 2 62577881 M: +61 417820641
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Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961