Linux Raid?

[craddy]

Hello, Merry Christmas and happy new year!

I’ve got a pc running Debian at the moment, it was setup through a need to run Perl on something for Uni, but I’ve started to use it for more and more. Now I’d like to setup up for a few different things but, I’d like a certain degree of reliability. Basically – what is the best way of setting up some sort of RAID using IDE disks? I’m using the server for the below at the moment:

• Slimserver – aprox. 100GB music library;
• Subversion;
• Apache / PHP / MySQL & FTP – testing only though;
• Samba .

The motherboard has no built on RAID so I’m guessing I either need to do it in software or use a PCI card. I’d like to run Debian – but would be swayed if there were some good reasons to use a different OS. This machine has no monitor / mouse or keyboard for normal use so no gui needed.

Btw – it’s a 850MHz Athalon with 512MB of RAM – and I’d like this project to be as cheap as possible – but with some reliability. I’ve also got one spare 250GB IDE disk, and a volume of this size would be good for now.
Any sugestions welcome!

Cheers,

Rich

 

[craddy]

Cheers for the sugestions, I've ordered a second 250GB disk and I'm going to go with software RAID - starting from scratch. The Uni module with the need for perl has ended so I can take out the old disk and start again.
Would I be better running the OS off two seperate (RAID) disks to the data, from the point of view of a hardware failure? The reason I ask is any replacement hardware, say the motherboard fried, would most likely be completly different.

 

[craddy]

I just wanted to reply with thanks! As said above software raid in Debian is nice and simple - important to remember to leave the array to synchronize for a while. But, again, thanks for the pointers whitecrook, really helped! Now I've just got to get the subversion repository working with Apache.