I have four identical 3GB HDDs.  Six GB is more than enough space for
what I want to do with this machine.  Originally I was thinking that
setting up two RAID 1 (mirroring) sets would give me the greatest
safety factor against failure of a disk, but, on the other hand, having
a "hot spare" available also sounded like it would give good insurance.

Also, I wonder if I did pair up the 4 disks into two RAID sets, what
would be the best physical configuration, i.e., should each set be
master-master (or slave-slave) on the primary and secondary ide
controllers, or should each RAID set be on the same controller?  (Or
it doesn't make any difference at all?)

Any suggestions/advice on how to use four 3GD HDDs (total 12GB) to get
6GB of usable space with the maximum amount of protection against the
failure of any one of the disks much appreciated.  Also, if you know of
good URLs pointing to NOT-too-technical discussions on this topic please
throw them my way.  TIA.

-- 
henry nelson
  WWW_HOME=http://yuba.kcn.ne.jp/~home/