You said: ================
* hot swap
I think I have read that Linux does not support hot swap SATA disks. Not yet.
I don´t know how exactly you define "hot swap". But the following works (I tried it):
3* Samsung Spinpoint 160G SATA disk Promise SATA 150 TX4 controller sw raid 5 over the three disks
promise driver module with 2.4.23 or so kernel
The drives are accessed as sd[something]. If you Plug and pull other scsi devices, you should use uuids for mdadm, not drive letters (because they change).
I set faulty one drive and removed it with mdadm. Then I unplugged it (first SATA plug, then current plug). The drive was gone in /proc/scsi/something. Then I reattached it vice versa. The drive was back in /proc/. Thenn´added the drive back to the raid with mdadm - resync - everything was fine.
So for changing the drive, you don´t have to power down the server, not even stop any server daemons.
I think SCSI is the only hot swap option unless he goes with hardware RAID. Also, hardware RAID does real hot swap (remove bad disk, insert good disk, back to computer games). With software RAID you must issue magic incantations to swap a disk. Some would argue against software RAID because of this.
Yes, that´s right, that´s a con. But I had massive problemns with two Mylex DAC960 hardware raid controllers - I would never use them again (were bought by my predecessors).
Guy
Norman.
-- Norman Schmidt Institut fuer Physikal. u. Theoret. Chemie Dipl.-Chem. Univ. Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet schmidt@naa.net Erlangen-Nuernberg IT-Systembetreuer Physikalische Chemie
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