I have ubuntu server 6.10 installed on a P4 1.8GHz machine. The OS is installed on a 40G hard drive.
I also have 4 500G sata drives set up as raid 5.
When the raid is disabled, the machine boots up in seconds.
When the raid is enabled, it takes about 10 minutes to boot and the drives spend a lot of time seeking during the boot process. After linux is booted up, everything works fine, the raid reports all drives are working fine and I can copy to and from it without any problems.
I have a friend that's a seasoned linux user and he has spent several hours playing with my system trying to improve boot time, but with no luck.

Anybody else ever experience this problem and have a solution?

Thanks
-jeff

When combining a Pentium 4 1.8 GHz with software RAID-5, the speed will be slow. Pentium 4 1.8 GHz are actually slower than a Pentium III unless the Pentium 4 is a Northwood core. I suggest using a multiple processor system when setting up software RAID level 5. For a server, I suggest using RAID-1 for storing the OS and RAID-5 or RAID-10 for serving data. It is best to use a hardware RAID controller like from 3ware.