hi,

i want to create a mobile raid 1 using my dell mini 9 netbook running ubuntu 10.10.

i have been reading up on how to do it here...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...n/SoftwareRAID

and i am ready to get started. (this is my first raid)

the first thing i need to do is identify a pair of portable usb drives for this purpose. i propose to use two 1tb drives plugged into the usb ports on the mini 9.

i have been shopping for these disks locally and on the web. i want to make absolutely sure there will be no problems removing oem partitions and so-forth on the new portable drives during set up for their new purpose.

there is allot discussion in some forums here of difficulty using wd drives of this type with linux as they have some partition for windows that is difficult to remove. subsequently my question is..

is there another 1tb usb portable disk that can serve this purpose without the difficulty reported by users of the wd 1tb "essential" usb drive?

my second question is am i misguided in trying to implement this project?

i think it can be done in an elegant way if i can just find the right drives.

please advise.

thank you.

USB drives in software RAID on a netbook doesn't sound like it is going to preform very well. What exactly is your goal here?

But as for the hardware, I would just get two USB enclosures and put whatever drives you want into them. It should end up being cheaper, and you will have more control over what hardware you are using.

hi,

my goal is to have a robust mobile archive for off-loading footage from video camera sd cards.

now i am thinking i might try with just a couple of usb sticks at first to see how it works.

Might look instead to a different file system maybe. Some file systems are almost raid like in performance and security.

Saying that though a software mirror is almost or as good for data recovery as any hardware.

thank you for the advise everyone i think perhaps my primary goal should be to develop experience with deploying raid storage.

to this end i will make the first attempt using a pair of matched usb stick drives.

unless someone else has any suggestions i will mark the thread solved.