Build a Cheap and Fast RAID 5 NAS

RAID Configuration, Continued

Step 6: Your screen should now appear similar to Figure 16. This is a confusing screen, because the hard drives you identified as your disk array in the previous step, are invisible. The array is not yet shown.

Figure 16: Select Configurable Array screen

Again, don't panic! The cursor is actually on the array in dialog box "A-00" of the figure, but it isn't displayed. Can you guess what to do to select the array? Hint: read the bottom row of the screen. That's right! Hit the "Space" key, and you will see the array in the A-00 box in the upper left hand corner of Figure 17. After you hit the space bar, you will see "Span-1" appear in the A-00 dialog box (Figure 17). This is your RAID array. Next we need to make it into a RAID 5 array.

Figure 17: Screen after hitting space bar

Hit <F10> to configure the array, which means telling the controller what kind of RAID you want the array to use. A dialog will open, as shown in Figure 18. The default is RAID 5, which is what we want. Move the cursor down 3 rows to "Accept", and hit <Enter>.

Figure 18: RAID array configuration dialog

Another dialog will now open, which asks you if you want to "Save Configuration" (see Figure 19). Choose "Yes" and hit <Enter>. The last thing to do in this step is to push the <Esc> key repeatedly to bring the cursor back to the main menu.

Figure 19: RAID Configuration confirmation