This menu is for creating a Software RAID5. RAID5 provides a good redundancy while keeping costs low.
If one drive fails all data are still accessible. After replacing the failed drive the RAID5 has to rebuild to provide redundancy.
The minimum requirement are 3 drives of same size.
This means:
Though, to increase data safety, it is sometimes a good idea to use drives from different production dates to help avoid having multiple drives from a bad batch fail at once or in close interval.
This Software RAID module is based on Geom_raid5.
For more Information see:
FreeBSD Manualpage:
This menu gives you and overview about existing RAID5 arrays. The example below shows an already configured and running RAID5 out of 3x 50GB disk.
This menu is for selecting which drives do you want to use to create a RAID5.
In this example the RAID5 shown above will be created.
Raid name
Select a name for your RAID array. This name will be shown on different places in the WebUI. ( example: Disks|Format )
Type
Shows the type of RAID you are currently creating.
Provider
Here you can select the disks you want to use.
Initialize
Check this box to create and initialize your RAID.
After “Applying” on Disks | Software RAID | RAID5 | Management your RAID5 should be shown as “REBUILDING”. Depending on the size of the drives this could take several hours.
When Status change to “COMPLETE” your drive should be ready to use.
The next steps are usually: