Raid 5 in Linux - HomeLinux

Matt Schick has given the world a gift today. Okay, so maybe that sounds a little dramatic, but this is something I have no idea how to do and I’m very interested in. He’s written an article on how to configure a RAID 5 array via mdadm.

The first hurdle was to figure out what chipset the SATA cards use, but after removing the SIIG sticker I found a nice SiI 3114 chip which is well supported via the sata_sil 2.6x kernel module. After enabling it in the kernel (CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIL) along with SCSI disk support and rebooting I got a nice trio of disc devices (/dev/sd[abc]) and was able to move on to partitioning.

My next desktop system will have an AMD 64 running Gentoo Linux with a RAID 5 array. I don’t know how long it’ll be until I get it, maybe decades, but I’ll get it. Thanks Matt for all the help!

For more useful stuff from Matt Schick check out these links:
mdadm Raid 1 migration
Raid ini Linux