How To Set Up A Hard Drive RAID In Open Media Vault
When setting up a software RAID on Open Media Vault, it’s required to have at least three hard drives (or more) of roughly the same size, with ideally no partition tables, or data on it at the start.
Setting up the storage pool in OMV is done in the web interface, so don’t worry about terminal commands, if you’re a beginner. To get started on setting up a hard drive RAID with OMV, open up a web browser, enter your OMV server’s hostname or IP address, and log in to the user interface.
Prepare Hard Drives
Before you try to create a software RAID in the OMV web interface, it’s essential to prepare the hard drives and delete all partitions and data on it. If you do not clear out the hard drives, RAID will not work.
To do a hard drive wipe, look to the side-bar of the OMV web UI and click on the “Disks” option.
In the “disks” area, find all of the hard drives you plan to use in your storage pool. Click on each one, and select the “wipe” button (be sure to select “quick”, unless you like waiting). Clicking the “wipe” button will delete all partitions, data, and information from the drive.
When the wiping process is complete, your hard drives are ready to go.
Create Storage Pool
To create your storage pool in Open Media Vault, click on “RAID Management” in the web UI’s sidebar. In the RAID management window, look for the “create” button and click on it. Selecting the create button will open up a pop-up window.
In the pop-up window, find “Name” and fill out the name of your storage drive. In this tutorial, we’ll write “data.” After filling out the name of your new storage pool, find the “Level” drop-down window and set it to “RAID 5”. If you do not like RAID 5, feel free to switch it to any of the other options available. Keep in mind that the RAID 5 option is the best one to go with if you want to set up a software RAID in Open Media Vault.
With the level of the storage pool set, it’s time to select your devices. Look at the list and check the boxes next to each hard drive you’d like to use in the RAID. When everything looks good, click the “create” button to make your storage pool.
Add Drives
Need to add more storage to your software RAID in Open Media Vault? Connect a new hard drive to your NAS and go through the “preparing the drives” step above. When your new hard drive is ready for use, access the “RAID management” section of the OMV web UI. In RAID management, select your storage pool and click the “Grow” button to open the drive chooser menu.
Inside the drive chooser menu, check the box next to the new hard drive and click “OK” to add it to the storage pool.
Format Storage Volume
The RAID 5 storage device is now up and running on your Open Media Vault NAS. However, you won’t be able to put any files or folders on it unless you format it. To format the device, open up the Open Media web UI and click on the “file-systems” button.
To create a new file-system on the RAID device, click the “create” button. Selecting the “create” button will open up a new file-system creation window that you can interact within the web UI.
In the create file-system dialog, find the “device” drop-down menu and select your new storage pool. Next, find the “file-system” menu and choose EXT4.
Note: EXT4 is sufficient for most users storage needs. Do not choose an alternative file-system to use unless you know what you’re doing!
When you’ve assigned a file system to the storage pool, click the “create” button.
To access your new RAID in OMV, click on the storage pool under “file-systems,” and select it. Once the storage pool is selected, click the “mount” button.
Delete RAID
Want to get rid of your software RAID in Open Media Vault but not sure how? Follow along with the steps below and learn how to delete and remove the storage pool from your Open Media Vault NAS safely.
Step 1: Transfer all of your data off of the RAID storage device and back it up somewhere safe. Ideally, store the backup on an external hard drive, and not something connected to your OMV device.
Step 2: Click on the “file-systems” option in the web-ui. Once there, highlight your storage pool and click the “unmount” button.
Step 3: After unmounting your storage pool, click the “delete” button.
Step 4: select the “disks” option in the side-bar. Once at the “disks” page, wipe each of the hard drives and blank them out. Be sure to select the “quick” option.
