Arch Linux

ChairmanFaust

Member

Registered: 2024-11-27

Posts: 7

Need advice for RAID, 5 nvme drives

I currently dual boot Win11 and Arch. Both are on a 5 nvme disk raid 5 using Intel RST. It works but i always see errors at shutdown and mdadm doesn't seem to be working correctly either. I've recently decided to get another SSD and put windows on its own disk (will be using QEMU passthrough) but I want to keep Arch on some kind of redundant filesystem since that is my primary OS. Is software RAID using LVM the better option these days? Can Arch boot that? I've even seen zfs as a redundant filesystem but that seems non-standard. Suggestions?

frostschutz

Member

Registered: 2013-11-15

Posts: 1,487

Re: Need advice for RAID, 5 nvme drives

LVM raid and mdadm share the same kernel implementation, just different metadata / commands. If you want a different implementation, that more or less leaves ZFS.

ZFS is certainly widespread enough to be considered "standard". It's just not in the kernel. Still, if that's what you want, just deal with it. It brings a lot of features to the table. It's popular for a reason.

I still use mdadm (and I mean mdadm's native metadata, not its fakeraid support) and use LVM separately (just for regular old logical volumes, and free choice of filesystems on top) but it's all a matter of personal preference.

Since you mention QEMU, you could give each of these a whirl (on smaller virtual drives) and see what you like best.

ChairmanFaust

Member

Registered: 2024-11-27

Posts: 7

Re: Need advice for RAID, 5 nvme drives

are you able to boot mdadm? is that why you use it separate from LVM?

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,223

Re: Need advice for RAID, 5 nvme drives

Both are on a 5 nvme disk raid 5 using Intel RST.

don't use single-parity - user either striped mirror (raid10) or dual-parity (raid6)
don't use FakeRaid (it's called that for a reason) - use proper software raid like zfs
don't install your os on any kind of raid but KISS