der.hans via PLUG-discuss said on Fri, 21 Jan 2022 00:47:42 +0000 (UTC)

>
>RAID is to avoid the drive loss pain altogether :). I probably won't do
>it, though. I might get another drive to have a cold spare. The spare
>can be smaller as I don't need everything on it in a pinch.

I've never understood the attraction for RAID by anybody who doesn't
have contracts with a 99.9%+ uptime provision. If you avoid Seagate
drives, your drive will probably last more than 3 years, about the time
it takes for your computer to obsolete.

If my drive goes south, I can grab another drive, install a minimal GUI
Void Linux, restore my *data* from backup, and pretty much be on my way.

Except...

You've reminded me that my backup procedures must include output from
the packager command listing the packages that were manually installed,
so that I can quickly reinstall everything necessary to duplicate my
old system. I already back up /etc/fstab and the output of the mount
command.

RAID has the following disadvantages:

* Cost is a multiple of a single drive
* Rebuilding requires one more layer to go through
* More disks mean more opportunity to write over one of them
* Hardware RAID might mean that if the RAID controller fails and you
  can't get identical hardware, you've lost all your data.

I'm a big fan of ext4. It   just   works   !

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques
---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
https://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss