mdadm

RAID5

You will need 4 disks and the mdadm package. The total size will be equal to the disks x 3, because one will be used for redundancy.

1sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/*md127* --level=5 --raid-devices=*4* */dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde*

Note the variable parts:

  • The name of the device could be /dev/md12 or whatever
  • The number of devices could be larger, but must be at least 4 for raid 5
  • We end by listing all devices in the new md device.

Now look at how the raid status:

1cat /proc/mdstat

This will increase until the entire thing is fine.

Check the health of your mdadm array:

1sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md127

You should see State : clean. If you see it is degraded, then a disk has broken.

Replacing a Disk

1sudo mdadm --add /dev/md127 /dev/sdb1