Previously we have set up a RAID 5, now, this time, we will be installing RAID 0.
First of all, a little bit of background. Whereas RAID 5 is a storage solution, that provides redundancy, RAID 0 is a very different animal altogether. Also known as a stripe set, it splits data evenly across two or more disks, thus improving performance. Of course, there’s no such thing as free lunch, so you end up sacrificing the reliability and if one of the hard drives which happens to be part of RAID 0 breaks down, the whole array’s information is most likely lots forever.
Now, that we know the potential risks and still want to go forward with creating our RAID 0 array we begin just like the other time around – by connecting the hard drives that would become a RAID 0 array.
Two Hard Drives are Ready to Become a RAID 0 Array.
Once we’ve done with that, we boot up and we start the setup similarly to the RAID 5 array set up: “System -> Administration -> Disk Utility”. Just as before we select “File -> New -> Software Raid Array”. This time we select a “RAID 0″ option and select the drives.
Installing RAID 0: Initial Stage.
We also select the array’s name and set both the array’s and stripe size. Once we’re all set, we press the “Create” button at the bottom of the window and off we go!
Now, even though the rest is not that much different from creating a RAID 5 array, I will still go through it, so that you don’t need to leave a page.
So once the RAID 0 is created and running, we’re not done yet – next steps are to create a partition and filesystem.
Ready to Create a Partition Table and File System.
Once that is done, you can see that Partition table is there, but we still need to create an actual partition, because the space is still unallocated.
We've Created a Partition Table.
So, let’s create a partition along with file system for it.
Ready to Create a Partition.
It looks like we’re done here, so this is what we see now.
Done With Creating a Partition and a Filesystem.
SInce we’re done with that, let’s select our newly created RAID 0 array in the left panel of the window and check that everything is ok.
We're All Done!
Looks like everything is up and running!
I’m failing to find any practical use for RAID0, to be honest – for that very reason of the whole array going down if one of the drives dies (ask me how I know
… I’d say that it might be better to just define a bunch of chunks and merge them using LVM. At least the volume will be still alive when one of them does down.
Hi, nice article (also read the firs part).
just want to know if it is possible to use palimpsest to create software raid from 2 or more partitions and not just whole hard drives.
as far as tried, i was not able to do it.
I’ve two drives, identical partitioned (i created the layout for the first and simply copied to the other one); now i set up e.g sda3 and sdb3 as linux raid (0xfd) and i would like to create a RAID1 with these two partitions, but palimpsest just look for whole unused drives.
anyway time ago I created such raid manually with mdadm command and palimsest shows them correctly (even if i can’t do Check, Add and so on..)
Thanks!
Yes, same here – palimpsest seems to operate on per disk level rather than on per partition.