software RAID 1 w/3 Drives

[Harold Michels]

The question is, on a three drive software RAID set up will the third 
drive be a hot spare, or will it be a mirror.

On the web pages mentioned earlier in this thread, on HOW-TO 4 or 5 I 
think, reference indicate that the RAID setups are software 
configurable. The drives can be set up with a hot spare, or with all of 
the drives except the first one as duplicate mirror drives. This is all 
under RAID 1.

The matter is written with some ambiguity on the first page, but is 
spelled out later.

I am puzzled as to what benefit would be derived from having an extra 
drive hot and spinning all the time wearing out. If you have a failure 
wouldn't you be better off adding a new in at that time and rebuilding 
the data from there?

Harold