Brett Maton wrote:

Hi, 

  Question for you guys. 

  A brief history: 
  RHEL 4 AS 
  I have a partition with way to many small files on (Usually around a couple of million) that needs to be backed up, standard

  methods mean that a restore is impossibly slow due to the sheer volume of files. 
  Solution, raw backup /restore of the device.  However the partition is permanently being accessed. 

  Proposed solution is to use software raid mirror.  Before backup starts, break the soft mirror unmount and backup partition

  restore soft mirror and let it resync / rebuild itself. 

  Would the above intentional break/fix of the mirror cause any problems? 

Is there a reason you can't use rsync to just update changes from the 
previous backup, once you have your initial one?

Regards,

Richard