On Sat, Apr 12, 2008 at 15:42:04 +0200, "Erik P. Olsen" <epodata@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I have therefore decided to switch to the software available with Fedora > and would like to know if the data already located on the disks is > accessible to the Fedora driver or if I have to reformat the drives and > install all the enchilada from the beginning? Luckily I have back-up of Not necessarily. The answer may also be different if you try to use dmraid support (assuming it exists for your card) and software raid (md). > everything and can recreate all data it just takes more time. Another even > more important question is will Fedora drive the disks through the > RocketRaid controller or should I get different hardware and if so which? I wouldn't do that as standard wisdom seems to be that unless you go buy a real raid card with battery backed cache, you are better off just using software raid. Most of the cheap raid cards are using their own propietary version fo software raid and when you use it you are tying yourself to their hardware. While I haven't made measurements myself, the claim is that the amount of cpu off loading you get by using a cheap hardware raid card isn't significant.