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Jonatan Hedborg
Asked: 2020-06-06 13:47:02 +0800 CST

Installing Ubuntu 20.04 (server) as software RAID with three disks

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I have a small PC that I'd like to use essentially as a NAS. It has three 2TB drives.

I don't know if this is even possible, but I'd like to use software RAID to somewhat secure the data stored on it. More specifically I'd like to use RAID 5 since that gives me reasonable protection while retaining 2/3's of the available space.

In the installer I've gotten to a point where I have 3 drives without any partitions on it. If I try to simply create a RAID 5 with all three drives, it refuses since that would not leave any drives for a boot partition. If I instead create a boot partition on one of the drives, the drive used is not listed when I try to create a RAID 5 partition afterwards.

Is there some way to create a RAID 1 partition for /boot, and using the remaining space for a RAID 5 partition? What are some options or alternatives?

Thanks!

system-installation nas raid 20.04 raid5

1 Answers

  1. As far as I know the size of every disk for the RAID 5 must be the same. You could try to create three partitions with the same size, one on each of the three disks. Also you need to create a boot partition on one of the disk. Here is a similar question with a more detail answer https://askubuntu.com/a/46854/535645

    I guess your aren't so familiar with RAID so I would recommend to create a RAID 1 with 4 (or 2) disks and the 5th (or 3rd) disk is for the boot partition. This makes the handling a lot easier in cases a disk fails/needs to be replaced.

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