[vox-tech] NAS/Printer Server/Web Server?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Alex Mandel (tech_dev at wildintellect.com):

> Anyone have any thoughts on connecting something like the following as
> an external usb 2 drive hardware RAID?
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182144
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121060

That's just two drives in one box.  (Personally, I rather like the idea
of each drive having its own USB/Firewire box w/PSU:  No SPoF.)  You
would need to furnish your own hardware RAID HBA.

I'm unclear on how you'd do hardware RAID serving to _USB_:  By
contrast, if you used the eSATA connectors (instead of USB), you could,
I guess, but I'm (speaking for myself) a little unenthusiastic about
SATA hardware RAID, generally.  Be careful what you pick; most
RAID-capable SATA HBAs are still fakeraid (manufacturer-specific
software RAID).

> I guess the other question, for a use case like this, infrequent copies
> of data for backup does it matter if it's software or hardware RAID?
> I kind of liked the idea of just popping in a drive and having build the
> RAID without me doing anything.

I don't think configuring md RAID1 for remirroring is exactly a big
deal, is it?  Actually, I'll be able to speak to that question soon,
because my server's recently failed one of its md RAID1 mirrored pair of
antique 18GB SCSI drives, and I'll need to replace it RSN.