[kwlug-disc] RAID solutions

[Chris Irwin]

On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 13:44, John Johnson <jvj at golden.net> wrote:
> Bordering on the pedantic, I would like to add the caution that disc
> mirroring through RAID or other mechanisms guard against only certain kinds
> of failures, e.g. a hardware drive failure.
>
> If the contents of a disc can be compromised by a software fault or malware,
> the mirrored data is also compromised.
> RAID solutions are only part of the solution set.
> There is still a place for backups.

Luckily, I don't think anybody here has suggested RAID is a substitute
for backups. As you said, RAID does not protect data.

RAID only hides disk failure (or in Richard's case, emphasizes it),
avoiding downtime and the need to go for your actual offsite volumed
backups that we all have.

> And if you can believe it: I have seen disc mirroring on partitions on the
> same physical hard drive.

This is the strangest thing I have heard today. I was going to post a
snarky response with some bizarre use-case, but couldn't.

-- 
Chris Irwin
<chris at chrisirwin.ca>