On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 9:09 PM, Ian Blackwell <ian at ikel.id.au> wrote: > On 30/01/2010 12:09 PM, Victor Padro wrote: >> Hello, >> >> I was wondering if someone could help me, > I'll try... >> I want to use one array with the 2 500GB HDDs in RAID1 for the OS and >> for some VMs, > That will work OK. >> and the other 4 1TB HDDs I want to create an array in >> RAID5 or RAID10 for file sharing across my home Network. >> > You can use these disks in a RAID5 array, but not RAID10. I fairly sure > you need more than 4. RAID10 is mirrored, so you only have "2" disks in > the array, which isn't enough for parity/striping stuff. You need at > least "3", which would mean 6 disks for RAID10. > > Having said that, I'm assuming you want to use the entire hard disk as a > participant in an array. You could create 2 x 500Gb partions on each > disk and then you have 8 x 500Gb partitions to use in a RAID10 array. > This approach sacrifices some redundancy though. If a disk dies > entirely, then you will lose two participants in the RAID array, which > may or may not be catastrophic - it depends on what you put where... >> I found a guide but it's a little bit outdated and it's for Debian... >> >> Do you have any other pointer I can read/use? >> > http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SoftwareRAIDonCentOS5 > > I've mostly installed RAID arrays at install time, which you'll need to > do as well if you want to put the OS on a RAID1 array. >> >> TIA. >> > Ian RAID10 does not use parity, it's just a mirror of stripes, so 4 disks will work perfectly fine with it. Use RAID10 for speed, and RAID5 if the space is more of an issue. With RAID10 you lose 1/2 the total space, and with RAID5 you lose 1 disk's worth.