Arch Linux

richwessels9

Member

Registered: 2018-12-04

Posts: 36

[SOLVED]RAID 1 Setup on Dual Boot

I am planning on installing Arch Linux alongside Windows 10. My boot drive is a NVMe SSD but the drives I want to setup up in a RAID 1 array are my data drives (2 1TB HDDs). I was planning on using the MSI RAID settings in the BIOS but I read online that this is not advisable. Since I will only use these drives on Linux. Should I setup the RAID array during installation of Arch Linux? Also, I will be putting /opt, /var and /home directories on this RAID array, so do I setup the RAID array before setting up the partitions?

Last edited by richwessels9 (2018-12-17 13:43:07)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,321

Re: [SOLVED]RAID 1 Setup on Dual Boot

I was planning on using the MSI RAID settings in the BIOS but I read online that this is not advisable.

If the firmware is providing fakeraid then software raid generally has better support.

Since I will only use these drives on Linux. Should I setup the RAID array during installation of Arch Linux?

  Yes the mount points you want to use contain files managed by pacman.

Also, I will be putting /opt, /var and /home directories on this RAID array, so do I setup the RAID array before setting up the partitions?

You can do either.  Formatting both disks with three identical sets of partitions and creating three RAID 1 volumes then formatting those.
Alternatively create one RAID 1 volume,  create three partitions on that then format those.

Last edited by loqs (2018-12-08 14:00:12)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED]RAID 1 Setup on Dual Boot

Also, I will be putting /opt, /var and /home directories on this RAID array

Why?

I'd put everything in a / partition on the SSD and then just use the RAID for my data files symlinked into ~.

If the RAID is going to be Linux only then I'd use plain mdadm instead of mobo-specific FakeRAID every time.

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Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

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richwessels9

Member

Registered: 2018-12-04

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED]RAID 1 Setup on Dual Boot

Also, I will be putting /opt, /var and /home directories on this RAID array

Why?

I'd put everything in a / partition on the SSD and then just use the RAID for my data files symlinked into ~.

If the RAID is going to be Linux only then I'd use plain mdadm instead of mobo-specific FakeRAID every time.

The space on the SSD is 200GB. As much as that is for /usr, /opt etc., I would like to be able to store a lot of programs and since /var increases as programs get updated (unless you clear it which I'd rather not do), I'd prefer to move /var to the RAID 1 array which has more space along with /opt and /home. Thanks for the suggestion, I have decided to use mdadm for the RAID array.

richwessels9

Member

Registered: 2018-12-04

Posts: 36

Re: [SOLVED]RAID 1 Setup on Dual Boot

Just to close out the thread for people interested in this, I ended up using mdadm for RAID 1 and created the RAID array before creating the partitions.