Server Assembly RAID 5 disk array

Recently, the server encountered a small problem. I had to redo raid. I found an article on the Internet. I felt very careful. I 'd like to share it with you. Record the record when the server is reinstalled and share it with you.

Hardware RAID 5:

Recently, I personally assembled a 1u rack-mounted storage server with an 8-hard drive using a dual-core P4 820d processor. During the assembly process, I created a disk array of hardware RAID 5 and software RAID 5 respectively, the process is very interesting. Now we will write a detailed setup process to give you more inspiration.

First, assemble the server, insert the SATA data cable to the hard disk, insert the four SATA interfaces on the motherboard, and connect the LG recorder to the optical drive using the parallel cable, this motherboard provides only one parallel ide interface to connect the optical drive to the display, keyboard, and mouse. The Boot test starts smoothly. Press the Del key to enter the BIOS.

In the bios, we can see that the motherboard has identified four large-capacity hard drives and LG recorders with a western Number of GB.

Hard drive and LG Burner

Next, enable the hardware RAID 5 mode of the motherboard to make up the four hard disks into a RAID 5 disk array. Foxconn is a good motherboard, but what is lacking in the US is that the manual is in English, if I was a friend of poor e-Wen, I had to get dizzy for the first time. I had been pondering for a long time and made a 800 technical service call from Foxconn until I had to bother the lady on duty, let's figure it out. Let's come with me. First move the cursor to integrated peripherals and press Enter.

Select onchip ide device and press Enter.

Select SATA mode. The default mode of the motherboard is IDE, that is, raid mode is not used. Press enter to enter the settings page.

Move the cursor to select raid and press Enter.

Boot screen shows, four physical hard disks have been recognized by the motherboard raid function, prompted to press the CTRL-I to enter raid detailed settings.

Go to the raid detailed settings page, select the first create raid volume option on the main menu page, and create a new raid volume.

Now go to the create volume menu interface and roll up a new name in the first name. Here I use volume0. You can also use tanghua or something like that, move the cursor to the second raid level and select raid mode. Here there are four options: RAID 0, raid1, raid10, and RAID5. We naturally need to choose the desired RAID 5.

Move the cursor to the disks option. Press enter here to add the hard disks to the raid volume.

Of course, we need to add all four hard disks connected to the motherboard. The selection method is to press the up and down arrow keys to move the cursor to the name of the hard disk to be added, and then press the Space key, A small triangle icon will appear before the hard disk name, indicating that the hard disk has been added to RAID 5.

Press enter to return to the upper-level setting interface. Then, the capacity option shows that the total capacity of the RAID 5 disk array consisting of four hard disks is 698.7 GB, which is not the sum of the four hard disks in raid0 mode, it's not like raid1, which is half of the total capacity of four hard disks, but about seven in ten. In this case, the transmission rate of the system hard disk is also greatly improved theoretically. If a hard disk breaks down in the future, data will not be lost. You only need to replace a new hard disk to form RAID5 again. The server's external services will not be interrupted due to data loss. Therefore, the RAID5 mode combines the transmission speed and large capacity of the raid0 mode, and also provides the security of raid1.

Keep the Strip Size Option as the default value.

Finally, move the cursor over the create volume option and press enter to create the RAID 5 disk volume.

The interface returns to the original main menu. Then, you can see some specific parameters of the RAID 5 disk array that you just created. The status is normal, indicating that the array is normal, the following are the parameters of four GB hard disks that have been added to RAID 5.

In this way, you can install the system and the driver. After the system and driver are installed, the installation of the hardware RAID 5 driver is complete. Next, let's take a look at how to install soft RAID 5.

Assemble soft RAID 5:

I didn't have four hard disks installed just now, but this server has eight hard disks in total. I suggested this server to be installed, instead of creating raid for the remaining four hard disks, it is easier to install and use the four hard disks. However, if you want to group the four hard disks, you need to set up RAID 5, raid0 and raid1 are absolutely not required. However, this motherboard supports up to four hard disks to form raid, and I cannot find a 32-bit RAID card that supports RAID 5, it is estimated that this type of card does not exist. I understand that all cards supporting the RAID 5 mode are basically 64-bit and cannot be used on the PC motherboard. Moreover, this type of 64-bit card can easily cost thousands of yuan, who can buy it? Forget it. Let's start from the actual situation and find a solution. I suggest him set up a soft RAID 5. He agreed.

So I first found a hard disk expansion card with four SATA interfaces, the 32-bit hard disk expansion card can be inserted into the ordinary PCI slots on the PC motherboard, or into the ordinary PCI slots on the PC motherboard. A common RAID card supports the RAID 0 and RAID 1 modes. However, in order to build a soft RAID 5, I need a hard disk expansion card and cannot provide other raid functions, but I can't buy a SATA hard disk expansion card with four interfaces on the market. There is no way to use this raid card. I have to use the old method to get a small program from the RAID card manufacturer, record the kernel of the RAID card and overwrite the kernel of the original RAID card with the hard disk expansion card to convert it into a pure hard disk expansion card without any raid functions.

When we use this hard disk expansion card to connect four new hard disks to the server and install the system and driver, we can start assembling soft RAID 5.

This soft RAID 5 is implemented through the raid function of the built-in software in windows, so it must be completed after the Windows operating system is installed. Both Windows2000 and Windows2003 provide this function, and the procedure is similar, if possible, I suggest you use Windows2003. Right-click Disk 1, select "Welcome to volume creation wizard", and click "Next.

The designers of windows are very simple here. After clicking Next, the "select volume type" dialog box is displayed immediately. The raid-5 volume exists. What do other options mean, no need to elaborate. Select the raid-5 volume and click Next.

Here, we add the four disks on the left to the right one by one, which means to add the four newly installed GB hard disks to the new RAID 5 disk array volume to be created, while adding the hard disks, one side can see that the total size of the right bottom side is increasing.

After the four hard disks are added, the total volume size is 715419 MB, which is basically the same as the total size of the hardware RAID 5 in windows.

Now, assign a drive letter to the new volume. The system assigns a drive letter F by default. Because the E disk is occupied by the optical drive at this time, follow the default drive letter and click Next.

To format the newly created RAID 5 disk volume, You must select NTFS as the file system.

By the way, do not forget to select "execute quick formatting". Otherwise, the formatting time for such a huge hard disk is enough for you to take a nap. Click Next.

Click Finish to start formatting the hard disk.

In disk management, we can see that both Disk 1 and disk 4 are "formatting" at the same time ".

It was too slow to finish 72% at five o'clock P.M.

Until the incredible evening at half past six, the re-generation of the new disk volume is complete. It's really a matter of polishing people's minds. I once heard the technical director of a famous NAS manufacturer in Beijing say that when they bought eight hard raid cards, they were born with the Windows soft RAID technology, at that time, we were given a group of Soft Raid for less than a day. It seems that we are still taking care of the dual-core processor, and it is worth celebrating.

Open my computer, and the new V Drive suddenly appeared.

Looking at the details, the total capacity of the new soft RAID 5 disk array volume is 698 GB, which is basically the same as that of the hard RAID 5.