[Info-vax] HP wins Oracle Itanium case

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 8/22/2012 11:45 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>
>> Bound-volume sets were weird, and rather unique.  And not something I'd
>> prefer to tangle with these days.  Though a Unix file system with mount
>> points can look vaguely familiar.
>
> RAID arrays are even more prone to data loss. They are in fact worse
> than bound volume when consifgured to have the 8 bits of each byte
> spread amongst multiple physical drives. While the RAID software handles
> the failure of a physical drive nicely, your system will lose all the
> data when the RAID software itself fails. (I have seen this happen).
>
> If the RAID software fails, it can ruin the config data for the array
> and you end up with un-decypherable gibberish on all your physical
> drives and need to send all of them to some professional outfit to
> rebuild based on bit patterns.
>
> RAID is not the end-all of disk problems and just because you have a
> fancy disk array doesn't mean you needn't worry about failure of your
> disk array.
>

You can build a RAID array that will survive the failure of one disk.
This is NOT a substitute for regular disk backups.  Some RAID 
controllers will rebuild a failed member of a RAID Array.  It is NOT
a substitute for disk backups to disk or tape.  There is always some 
idiot who will scribble gibberish over a RAID array or commit some
atrocity that no one has thought of yet!