Having troble running Software raid on linux Help Needed

[DomeTech]

Hello I'm not sure if this is the right forum for a question like this and if it isn't please direct me to a forum that is. I want to uses my old gaming computer as a Plex and Nextcloud server and possibly use it as a gaming console.

 

The issue

 

I had 3 10tb drives in the computer before running windows storage spaces in a raid 5 like configuration plus a boot ssd drive not part the raid . The computer ran the Plex server fine in windows but Nextcloud is a linux exclusive. I backed all my files up to a fourth drive and installed linux. I picked distros that had a GUI because Im thinking about making the computer a gaming console as well. Since then I had tried creating a raid 5 array using both mdadm and Btrfs on pop os and fedora kde on the 3 10tb drives (still using the ssd as a boot drive and not part of the raid). Both efforts have ended in me breaking the operation system. I followed guides online but they have not worked. I know the drives work because they still work fine in windows. I'm pretty sure what is breaking the system is the nano command that the guides have. I have also never been able to verify that the raid arrays have ever worked in linux even before the nano commands. I have also found out the hard way not to uses fdisk because a lot of the guides forgot to mention that I need to uses tools like gparted to partion the drive and not fdisk because fdsik is outdated and dose not support drives bigger than 2 tbs. I also found out that Btrfs is not great for raid 5. So I believe I'm looking for a way to get mdadm to work correctly unless there is a better and hopefully GUI way to do raid 5 on linux.

 

As you might be able to tell from my terminology I'm kinda a linux noob and only just recently started daily driving it on my main computer. I'm not sure if I'm just missing something or the guides are just incorrect. Im open to installing any distro that might do this better except for arch because I want this to be pretty stable. If there is any thing you know that could help me that would be much appreciated. 

 

links the guides I followed that did not work for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Iq9hx8V7U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQen55FIfMM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzmIoXRkjDs

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

I have done a lot of raid on linux on the command line, so hopefully I can make this make sense.

 

Id go mdadm here, good raid 5, fairly easy to use.

 

I don't know of a gui for mdadm, but its fairly simple.

 

FIrst thing, find the disk names. Open a terminal and run lsblk to see you disks. They should have a name like sda, sdb, sdc and so on.

 

Then run 

 

sudo mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd

Make sure to change the disks at the end of the command.

 

run lsblk again, you will now see a md0 device under all the hdds.

 

Then reboot.

 

Then open the KDE partition manager, and you will see a new 20tb volume. You can format and mount it in the gui from there.