It seems that performance wise these solutions are about the same and thats not my main concern anyway, but I need to know how do they compare from the point of data getting corrupted? What are the chances of getting corrupted array message and the ways to recover the array? Two identical model/size drives will be used for this RAID array.
1 Answer
Hardware vs Software Recovery
My personal experience - recovering from software RAID is easy. However, sometime finding out exact hardware RAID requirements can be a nightmare. A good backup can save from RAID hardware incompatibility problems. Software RAID allows you to mix different drive and sizes. You can not do something like this with hardware RAID cards. With software RAID you can swap the drives to a different server and read the data. There is no vendor lock in with software RAID solution.
Cons of Hardware RAID Proprietary – Minimal or complete lack of detailed hardware and software specifications.
On-Disk meta data can make it near impossible to recover data without a compatible RAID card – If your controller goes casters-up you’ll have to find a compatible model to replace it with, your disks won’t be useful without the controller. This is especially bad if working with a discontinued model that has failed after years of operation
