3 disk Raid 5 on FreeBSD 11

[Matthew Seaman]

On 2016/12/14 11:39, Gerard Seibert wrote:
> I have an HP Envy 810-170st PC running Windows 10 Pro / 64 bit with a 3
> disk raid 5 setup. Intel Rapid Storage Technology is handing the raid
> setup.
> 
> Now, if I wanted to reformat the system and install FreeBSD 11, what
> would I have to do to get the system set up with raid 5 again? Intel
> doesn't have a driver that runs under FreeBSD for this as far as I can
> tall.

You have essentially two choices here:

  * use the hardware RAID that you're currently using with Windows

  * use ZFS to create a RAIDZ pool

The first option depends on having the right sort of support in FreeBSD.
 You should be able to test that by downloading a USB install image and
booting from that to use the live FreeBSD filesystem.  You should be
able to see if your Intel RAID is recognised by looking at the boot
messages and seeing what devices appear in /dev

If you can see the RAID device then you should be able to delete your
current Windows install and write FreeBSD onto the system in its place.

Your other choice is to ignore the on-board RAID, and just have FreeBSD
access each drive individually and use what the OS provides to create
your disk arrays.  If you want a RAID5 type of setup, then the realistic
choice is to use ZFS with RAIDZ.  You might find going with a mirrored
pair of drives works better, or add a 4th disk and make a two mirrored
pairs.  You can use gmirror(8) and gstripe(8) to implement that if you
don't want to go down the ZFS route.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

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