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RAID Software Installation

Warning

Incomplete Article

Preparation

  1. Create partitions following the desired file system instructions for the partition only.

Create RAID Array

  1. Create RAID 10 array with 4 devices using layout far2. 
    # mdadm --create --homehost=<name-here> --vervose --level=10 --metadata=1.2 --chunk=512 --raid-devices=4 --layout=f2 /dev/md/MyRAID10Array /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sda4

  2. Check progress of RAID array creation. 

    $ cat /proc/mdstat

    Note

    Continue to the next step after RAID array creation has completed.

  3. Write RAID configuration. 

    # mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf

    Note

    If doing this at the installation of Arch Linux this step would be done once in chroot.

  4. Assemble the RAID array. 

    # mdadm --assemble --scan

Format RAID Array File System

Optimize the RAID by calculating the stride and stripe values as follows.

  • stride = chunk size / block size Example: 512 / 4 = 128. Therefore stride equals 128.

  • stripe width = number of physical data disks x stride Example: 4 x 128 = 512. Therefore the stripe width equals 512.

  • Get the chunk size. 

    # mdadm --detail /dev/md0 | grep 'Chunk Size'

  • Get the