RAID10 install question

[thezombiehunter]

How difficult would it be for someone who hasn't used linux in years to install gentoo with RAID10 using mdadm?

[NeddySeagoon]

thezombiehunter,

If you can install Gentoo, you can do it on a raid too.

I suggest you do a single drive install, following the handbook, then migrate that install to raid.
That way you get to practice replacing a faulty drive, when all you have to lose is your basic gentoo - no user data.
It takes a little longer but you acquire a skill you hope you will never need.
The migration is straightforward. Make your raid set in degraded mode (with one drive missing)
Copy your single drive install to the degraded raid set.
Test the degraded raid set - eg boot into it, make sure it works.
Add the drive holding the single drive install to the raid set, so its not degraded any more.

To install straight to raid isn't difficult either. You partition your drives, as the handbook says, then you invoke mdadm to create your raid sets, lastly you make your filesystems on top of the raid sets, not on the partitions. From then on, you use /dev/md... whenever the handbook talks about /dev/sd....

As you will have at least 4 drives in your raid sets, consider lvm2 too. Its another layer of abstraction between you and the platters but you can resize logical volumes 'on the fly', no reboot required. Do choose filesystems that support resizing though.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.