So I’ve re-installed openSUSE as a software RAID. I disabled the Intel FAKE RAID and setup my 6 disks as JBOD. Layout is as follows:
/md0 /boot 100MB (sda1 and sdb1 - RAID 1)
/sda2 swap 4GB
/sdb2 swap 4GB
/md1 / 20 GB (sda3 and sdb3 - RAID 1)
/md2 /home 900 GB (sda4 and sdb4 - RAID 1)
/md3 /data 5.46 TB (sdc, sdd, sde, and sdf - RAID 5)
This took several tries as the KDE Live and Net installers did not want to install this setup for whatever reason (kept crashing at end of install). The full install version of 11.4 did work fine. However, I have a couple notes on this:
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During the install, the installer did not prompt me to use mdadm like it did when I had the FAKE RAID controller active. I was able to specify the RAID through the partitioner, which seemed to work okay.
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Once installed, my CPU usage is a lot higher compared to when running dmraid. Typically it seems to be using 12 to 15 % for the md_raid processes when the computer is at idle.
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My HD I/O is thrashing very badly. All drives are continually active for some reason, even when not running any programs, and am just logged into the machine. I/O across each RAID does not seem to be in sync when monitoring the activity in System Monitor.
The last two points concern me a lot. I’m seriously contemplating taking my chances with dmraid for the increase in performance and to stop my drives from thrashing so much.
Thoughts and suggestions?