software RAID 1 w/3 Drives

[JT Moree]

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Harold Michels wrote:
> 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.

it depends on how you configure it.  either way is possible.

> 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?

as a spare it might not be spinning based on the power settings in the
system.  might only spin up when needed.

some systems can add the same hot spare to multiple arrays.  In that
case it gets used where ever needed most.

In our case we have 4 drives in a 2U case and cannot fit anymore drives
in it.  / is on a 4 drive RAID 5 array.  /boot is on a 4 drive RAID 1
array.  neither has any spares.

- --
JT Morée
PC Xperience, Inc.
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