[conspire] md raid as backup?

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (togo at of.net):

> Say I set up my notebook to have /home mounted in a RAID1 partition.
> When I use my laptop alone it's running with just md in a
> all-failed-but-internal mode, which works, and when I sit down at
> location X, I plug in an external USB2 drive and mdadm --re-add it,
> and it proceeds to use spare I/O cycles to sync any changes I've made
> since it saw the laptop last.  When I go, I hibernate the laptop, and
> that USB2 drive gets failed until I sit down at location X again.

I like it.  One thing, though:  The mirroring operation will^Wmight take
a long time, especially at USB speeds (even USB 2.0 Hi-Speed with a
theoretical ceiling of 480MB/sec), and I'm betting that the mirrored
pair will be slow as molasses outdoors on a late-December evening.  But
I could be mistaken.  And, as you say, the detached "failed" drive would
qualify as a genuine backup.

You lose nothing from trying, except possibly your time and patience.

-- 
Cheers,             
Rick Moen                 Support your local medical examiner:  Die strangely.
rick at linuxmafia.com