Monday, April 15, 2013

How to configure raid 5


RAID CONTROLLER BIOS CONFIGURATION
Creating RAID 0, RAID 0/1, and JBOD arrays will destroy all data on all of the selected disks.
7. Reboot and when prompted press Ctrl-H to run the RAID BIOS Setting Utility.  The opening screen is depicted below.  The Main Menu is top left, how to use and navigate it is in the Help to the right, and what it affects is in the Channel Status at the bottom.  You should see the two drives in the Channel Status as shown.
8. Select 1. Create Array and press Enter.  This will produce a Main Menu with:
1. Array Mode RAID 0 (Striping)
2. Array Name RAID_0_0
3. Select Drives
4. Block Size 64K
5. Start Creation Process
9. For a RAID 0 array and to use the default Array Name and Block Size (which are fine), use the down arrow key to skip down to 3. Select Drives and Press Enter to select it.
10. For other RAID configurations leave "1. Create Array" highlighted and press Enter, as I did.  That will produce the following main menu:
RAID 0 (Striping) for performance
RAID 1 (Mirroring) for data protection:
RAID 0/1 (Mirrored Striping)
JBOD(Volume)
11. Select RAID 1 (Mirroring) for data protection: and press Enter. That will pop-up a an option list with...
Create only
Create and duplicate
12. Create only destroys all data on all selected drives. Create and duplicate preserves data on the source disk (the first disk that was selected) and copies it to the mirror disk (the second disk that was selected) when the mirror array is created. As both of our drives were new (no data on them), we selected Create only and pressed Enter, which produces:
1. Array Mode RAID 1 (Mirroring)
2. Array Name RAID_1_0
3. Select Drives
4. Start Creation Process
13. Select 3. Select Drives and press Enter. That will move the focus down to the Channel Status menu.
14. Select the first drive by pressing Enter. That will change the
( ) in front of the drive to (1).
15. Press Enter to select the second drive for the array and note that it becomes drive (2). That will also shift the focus back to the top of the menu