<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9"> <TITLE>The Software-RAID HOWTO</TITLE> <LINK HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html" REL=next> </HEAD> <BODY> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html">Next</A> Previous Contents <HR> <H1>The Software-RAID HOWTO</H1> <H2>Jakob Østergaard <CODE> <A HREF="mailto:jakob@unthought.net">jakob@unthought.net</A></CODE> and Emilio Bueso <CODE> <A HREF="mailto:bueso@vives.org">bueso@vives.org</A></CODE></H2>v1.1, 2004-06-03 <P><HR> <EM>This HOWTO describes how to use Software RAID under Linux. It addresses a specific version of the Software RAID layer, namely the 0.90 RAID layer made by Ingo Molnar and others. This is the RAID layer that is the standard in Linux-2.4, and it is the version that is also used by Linux-2.2 kernels shipped from some vendors. The 0.90 RAID support is available as patches to Linux-2.0 and Linux-2.2, and is by many considered far more stable that the older RAID support already in those kernels.</EM> <HR> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc1">1.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html">Introduction</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.1">1.1 Disclaimer</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.2">1.2 What is RAID?</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.3">1.3 Terms</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.4">1.4 The RAID levels</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html#ss1.5">1.5 Requirements</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc2">2.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-2.html">Why RAID?</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-2.html#ss2.1">2.1 Device and filesystem support</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-2.html#ss2.2">2.2 Performance</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-2.html#ss2.3">2.3 Swapping on RAID</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-2.html#ss2.4">2.4 Why mdadm?</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc3">3.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-3.html">Devices</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.1">3.1 Spare disks</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-3.html#ss3.2">3.2 Faulty disks</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc4">4.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-4.html">Hardware issues</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.1">4.1 IDE Configuration</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-4.html#ss4.2">4.2 Hot Swap</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc5">5.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html">RAID setup</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.1">5.1 General setup</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.2">5.2 Downloading and installing the RAID tools</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.3">5.3 Downloading and installing mdadm </A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.4">5.4 Linear mode</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.5">5.5 RAID-0</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.6">5.6 RAID-1</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.7">5.7 RAID-4</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.8">5.8 RAID-5</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.9">5.9 The Persistent Superblock</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.10">5.10 Chunk sizes</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-5.html#ss5.11">5.11 Options for mke2fs</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc6">6.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html">Detecting, querying and testing</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.1">6.1 Detecting a drive failure</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.2">6.2 Querying the arrays status</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.3">6.3 Simulating a drive failure</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.4">6.4 Simulating data corruption</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.5">6.5 Monitoring RAID arrays</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc7">7.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html">Tweaking, tuning and troubleshooting</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.1">7.1 <CODE>raid-level</CODE> and <CODE>raidtab</CODE></A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.2">7.2 Autodetection</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.3">7.3 Booting on RAID</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.4">7.4 Root filesystem on RAID</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.5">7.5 Making the system boot on RAID</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.6">7.6 Converting a non-RAID RedHat System to run on Software RAID</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.7">7.7 Sharing spare disks between different arrays</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-7.html#ss7.8">7.8 Pitfalls</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc8">8.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-8.html">Reconstruction</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-8.html#ss8.1">8.1 Recovery from a multiple disk failure</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc9">9.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html">Performance</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.1">9.1 RAID-0</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.2">9.2 RAID-0 with TCQ</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.3">9.3 RAID-5</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.4">9.4 RAID-10</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-9.html#ss9.5">9.5 Fresh benchmarking tools</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc10">10.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-10.html">Related tools</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.1">10.1 RAID resizing and conversion</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-10.html#ss10.2">10.2 Backup</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc11">11.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-11.html">Partitioning RAID / LVM on RAID</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.1">11.1 Partitioning RAID devices</A> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-11.html#ss11.2">11.2 LVM on RAID</A> </UL> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc12">12.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-12.html">Credits</A></H2> <P> <H2><A NAME="toc13">13.</A> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-13.html">Changelog</A></H2> <UL> <LI><A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-13.html#ss13.1">13.1 Version 1.1</A> </UL> <HR> <A HREF="Software-RAID-HOWTO-1.html">Next</A> Previous Contents </BODY> </HTML>
