On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 10:44:45AM -0700, Gilad Arnold wrote:

This leads me to think that even with 2 drives, RAID10/f2 is a better
choice than RAID1. Is this a fair assessment?

Okay, I found the benchmarks that support this hypothesis ;-)

And, if it is the case, can RAID5 be converted to RAID10/f2
on-the-fly, or would I have to take the longer path?  (i.e. degrade
RAID5, start RAID10 in degraded mode, copy data, kill RAID5 and
rebuild RAID10)

Some more reading leads me to think that on-the-fly RAID5 to RAID10/f2
conversion wouldn't work.  However, I'm tempted to believe that I can
avoid the data copy phase entirely and skip straight to RAID10 rebuild:

1. Shutdown the RAID5.

2. Create a RAID10/f2 on top of one drive + missing, ignoring mdadm's
   warnings about an existing array. If I'm not terribly wrong, this
   will give me a degraded RAID10 that still has all my data in place.

3. Add the second drive to the RAID10 and watch it rebuild.


Apologies for my petty questions ;-)  Advice appreciated.

Gilad