openSUSE LEAP 15.0 ,Good tutorial/reccomendations for beginner setting up Raid array?
 

Hello, I have a Sony VGN-AR590E laptop -> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Sony-V...0E.5775.0.html

The laptop comes with two 160gig Sata drives that I am able to setup as a raid array. I don't know if I should really do that though.

Initially when installing LEAP 15 I chose RAID 0 striped not RAID 1 redundant by using the Intel RAID configuration utility that I can access after POST by (ctrl-I).

There are so many options with the LEAP 15 installer setting up harddisk partitions for a beginner.

I am wondering if I can get recommendations on how to setup this computer. It's nothing used for business so reinstalling now with a verified (.iso) is not a large issue.

I know there is more research to do but I wanted to start here.

Thank You

I have been an openSUSE user for around 15 years, a software RAID1 user for around half that time. I currently have 3 such systems, including this I'm typing from, 42.3 currently booted, which runs 24/7. All my PCs are multiboot. This one, which differs from the other two with RAID, has 4 openSUSE installations and an empty partition waiting for me to get around to putting 15.1 beta on it, all on sda, which is an SSD. My RAID1 disks on this has 9 partitions each, with 6 each comprising 6 md devices, for /home, /srv and other data filesystems. My older RAID PCs have the operating systems as well as the data partitions on md devices. I configure swap only on partitions.

My boot devices are EXT2 formatted partitions, not RAID, not MBR. All my other native RAID filesystems are EXT4, not the openSUSE default BTRFS. I configure for a new disk/RAID manually in advance from live media boot, along with the partitioning, before installation. I go even farther, by putting the installation kernel and initrd on the EXT2 boot partitions, and begin my NET installations loading them with Grub. Subsequent installations are prepared in advance in same manner except because of multiboot there's no need for the live media boot. :)

I always create partitions in advance of running any installer. This pre-partitioning I do, and you could do, with any partitioner you choose, would avoid what I have heard about the openSUSE installer in recent versions having some kind of trouble installing RAID, which IIRC has been solved in the upcoming in May or June 15.1 release. Before you begin I recommend spending some time searching the openSUSE forums and mailing lists about installing to RAID and UEFI, to be sure you don't waste an unreasonable amount of time getting trapped by lack of knowledge. To that end, I recommend utilizing the openSUSE forums, where I believe there may be more helpers than here that are familiar with RAID installation/setup in openSUSE.

For me, YaST did make RAID configuration very easy when I first started using RAID, but I was well used to YaST/installation partitioning by that time. For my newer RAID installations I have used cmdline tools to set them up prior to beginning each installation. It's really not hard in hindsight, but can seem intimidating at the beginning of the process. Indeed that's how I felt with each new RAID disk set, even just 6 months ago.

I do not recommend using BIOS RAID. I can't recall ever seeing any openSUSE user recommending to use BIOS RAID, nor for that matter any other Linux distro user either. The main reason is BIOS RAID disks can't be moved to another PC (or laptop) without data loss if/when that PC/laptop dies.

Hopefully I can be more help when you have more specific questions.

I'm glad a current openSUSE user finally replied - I've been waiting, not wanting to take the thread off the zero-reply list.

I don't recommend openSUSE at all to new users, but that was mainly because of the way the btrfs (sub-)volumes are arranged to accommodate snapper. Looks like /var has been done more sanely in 15, which would ease that concern to some extent.
All-in-all, btrfs makes multi-volume a no-brainer - including converting back and forward between different modes.

But whether that extends to the Intel "RAID" - especially breaking a RAID0 - I don't know. If it were me, I'd get rid of the Intel RAID, and just install to one disk, then create btrfs filesystem(s) on the second disk and convert to multivolume at my leisure later.
Maybe yast can handle all that at install, but like mrmazda I tend to pre-allocate what I want before install - due to fiascos in the past.