So, I've created a RAID 1 array using two 500 GB hard drives.
I used a Linux Mint Boot Disk, and then used mdadm to create the RAID 1 array using 2 hard drives, each which has a single primary partition.
This was accomplished via:
mdadm --create --verbose --metadata=1.0 /dev/md0 --level=mirror --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb
The array build took about an hour.
At this point, I'd like to install Linux Mint on the new RAID array. However, I'm uncertain how to proceed here. Since the RAID array is a software raid, where is the information about the array even stored? If I reboot, won't the information be lost? How do I go from creating the RAID array with mdadm, to actually installing an OS on it?
Best Answer
If you rebooted now - it would just try booting into an empty Raid - which of course you can't do.
The MD data is stored on disk in a metadata sector, this contains everything the disk needs to tell the OS it exists.
If you have created this through the live CD then just using the Desktop installer will work after you have formatted the Raid using mkfs, but from what I remember you will need to create partitions for /boot and /swap
mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/"md device"