Error Create Raid Array

[F35]

I am using the gui "Disk Utility". It looks simple enough. Disk Utility shows the 3 2TB drives I want to build into 1 Raid 5 disk. However, when I go to FILE | CREATE RAID and am presented with all the drives, the 3 drives are grayed out and the message says "no free space". I have attempted to format the drive, format the partion, delete the partions, mount, unmount. But in the end, I get Error Creating Raid Array. Looks so easy to use the disk utility gui and get this setup. What am I missing? Wrong format for the drives? What?

[sarkiss]

I was having similar issues and the only way I could proceed was to delete all existing partitions and let Disk Utility create one. But the partition that Disk Utility created was giving WARNING: The partition is misaligned by xxx bytes messages similar to the one described at http://askubuntu.com/questions/30071/the-partition-is-misaligned-error-in-disk-utility-should-i-repartition

You can still create RAID using mdadm command line utility as described here (https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup). However, if you need a GUI, the only other option I could find is Webmin (http://www.webmin.com/). I tried it and I'm very happy; see Using Webmin for Linux RAID (https://plus.google.com/u/0/106416594206743737486/posts/2MwKjSoivBR). I don't know why Webmin is not concluded in the standard Ubuntu or CentOS distribution, but it has RPM and Debian packages available.

Hope this helps.

[F35]

Thanks, sarkiss, for the tip. I may give webmin a try, especially since it might notify me of raid issues...hadn't been able to figure that out using mdadm.

Since my original issue, I have learned how to use mdadm. It wasn't that difficult, it is just when I first started considering RAID, it seemed like a gui like "Disk Utility" would work. "Disk Utility" was just too problematic and I switched.

[rubylaser]

Thanks, sarkiss, for the tip. I may give webmin a try, especially since it might notify me of raid issues...hadn't been able to figure that out using mdadm.

Since my original issue, I have learned how to use mdadm. It wasn't that difficult, it is just when I first started considering RAID, it seemed like a gui like "Disk Utility" would work. "Disk Utility" was just too problematic and I switched.

If you don't mind using the command line, mdadm can easily be setup from partitioning (properly aligned), to mdadm (http://zackreed.me/articles/38-software-raid-5-in-debian-with-mdadm), to SMART alerting (http://zackreed.me/articles/45-how-do-i-know-if-my-hard-drive-is-failing), setting up a UPS (http://zackreed.me/articles/40-ups-protect-your-files), and spinning down idle disks (http://zackreed.me/articles/60-spin-down-idle-hard-disks). I have all of these topics covered on my site (http://zackreed.me/).