[Novalug] best hard disk setup for home file server?

[Bryan J. Smith]

It means a card that ...

1.  Buffers into its own local, capacitor-based SRAM / battery-backed DRAM
2.  When the system recovers, it compares to the drive and re-commits if necessary

You can't get that out of software RAID or on-board Fake/Free RAID (FRAID**).
You have to have a card with its own, on-board intelligence that acts completely
independent of the system, with its own, non-volatile SRAM and/or DRAM.

So when the system recovers, the card then checks the drives as re-commits any
incomplete commits (often while the system is still in POST/early booting).

-- Bryan

**NOTE:  I coined the term FRAID well before Rick Moen aka Linuxmafia.COM.
I.e., had a near-flame war with him on SVLUG about it almost 2-years earlier
when I was trying to explain to him that there are non-FRAID ATA solutions
available, including those using the same IOP30x microcontrollers as SCSI
designs.  He would later "come around" using the term Fake RAID (FRAID),
which is quite post my publication using the term Fake/Free RAID (FRAID).  ;)



----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Ertel <richard.ertel at gmail.com>

"Without an intelligent RAID card, things like TLER matter little."

what exactly does that mean? that getting a "raid edition" drive that
has TLER but not using an intelligent hardware raid card = a waste?
that using a non-TLER "green" "cheap" drive with software RAID is ok?