[Techtalk] formatting half a mirrored raid...

[Conor Daly]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 06:03:11PM -0400 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Walt thought:
> At 09:31 PM 6/13/2003 +0100, you wrote:
> >Yes.  raid3 is essentially raid0 + parity disk.  You should be able to add
> >
> >parity_disk     /dev/sdd1
> 
> So... Can I make *any* disk the parity disk?

Pretty much, so long as it's big enough.  If you're going to use raid3,
use your fastest disk as the parity disk due to the write bottleneck
mentioned earlier.  OTOH, if you go the backup/wipe/restore route, choose
raid5 and you don't get the bottleneck.
 
> For instance, I have another 120 gb IDE drive
> waiting to be used; can I use that? Or does
> the parity drive need to be the same spec as
> the other drives?

You can use the 120Gb disk but, AIUI, you waste capacity since you only
need 73Gb of it to do parity for the rest of the 73Gb disks.

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
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