Creating a linux software RAID with HDDs greater than 4tb and kernel tweaking for increased speeds pt1 (RAID creation)
So I've run out of storage space at home, and decided to build another NAS box with another HP Microserver N54L.These cheap and cheerful servers come in at around £99 (with cashback) and HP are always doing cashback with these servers it seems.
I upgraded the memory to 8gb with these Crucial memory DIMMS (Part Number: CT2KIT51272BD1339 - 8GB Kit (4GBx2), 240-pin DIMM) for £85 inc shipping.
I am also using a 8GB USB key to boot from and a dual port gig NIC from intel.
So my drive config is 5 x 4TB HDD (WD Reds -WD40EFRX), but the N54L has a limitation where the 5th SATA connector is for the CDROM drive, so it's purposely crippled by default. To unleash the full speed of 3gb/s SATA, you have to do a simple BIOS update. Instructions are here
Once that's done, you will have hot-swap and a 5th SATA port running at 3gb/s!
First - you must *not* use fdisk, as this will only recognise the first 2tb of the drives. I only realised this after I had created the RAID and then did a mkfs.xfs, and found out I only had 8TB or so of space.... like W T F?!
You will need to partition it with GPT and set the flag to RAID. This can be done with gparted. There is an ISO you can download from the gparted site.
Once there, just partition with gparted, and set flag=raid. Then apply.
Restart and then build your array with the command
mdadm --create --verbose --metadata=1.2 /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=5 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 --name=HALAt this current time, mine is still rebuilding, but hopefully this should work!
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid5 sde1[5] sdd1[3] sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0]
15627540480 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [5/4] [UUUU_]
[>....................] recovery = 3.9% (154246500/3906885120) finish=1105.3min speed=56583K/sec
unused devices: <none>
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