With the backup server “Hinako” running a RAID array with 4 drives, I began to see how much better it is to have redundancy.  She was fitted with 4 250GB hard drives, and the plan was to hook her up to the network and perform periodic backup tasks.  That was done about a month ago.  She is running the new CentOS 5, with RAID 1/0/5 arrays to manage the filesystems contained within.  She also is running an additional LVM layer on top of the RAID 5 array, just as icing on the cake.  One thing that surprised me was that the root directory was able to be contained within this LVM group, without much complaint.  /boot, however, was the only partition to be left RAID 1.

Fast forward to today, after much success with Hinako, I decided it was time to have “Jo” share in the RAID party.  Initially I tried to install Arch Linux, but noticed that GRUB did not like my drive arrangements.  I believe I could have made it work eventually, but I preferred to have a working system before the sun set.  Using the Arch installer, I made the array, and rebooted to Zenwalk and installed it on top.  It is restoring from backups as I write this.  The array arrangement is different from Hinako, in that I am not using LVM.  I wanted to see how it would turn out; I ended up having to create md devices for every filesystem I wanted to include, a total of 7.

If this sounds tedious to you, it is.

I documented my experiences here: http://wiki.zenwalk.org/index.php/Software_RAID