RAID3, Software, How to setup

Example system has 1 80GB SATA system drive at /dev/ad0, and 5 750GB SATA drives available at /dev/ad1 through /dev/ad5.

# graid3 load
# graid3 label myraid3array ad1 ad2 ad3 ad4 ad5

You just made a RAID3 array... yes, it really was that easy. Check it out:

# graid3 status
        Name        Status  Components
raid3/myraid3array  COMPLETE  ad6
                              ad8
                              ad10
                              ad12
                              ad14

Now we need to format and mount it:

# newfs /dev/raid3/myraid3array

(you'll get several pages of cluster IDs scrolling by at this point, for a raid3 array of any significant size. On the example 5x750GB array we're discussing here, this step took about 90 seconds.)

# mkdir /mnt/myraid3array
# mount /dev/raid3/myraid3array /mnt/myraid3array

Voila, we now have a gigantic failure-tolerant array available!

# df -h /mnt/myraid3array
Filesystem                 Size    Used   Avail   Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/raid3/myraid3array    2.6T    12K    2.6T    0%        /mnt/myraid3array

Don't forget to add an entry to /etc/fstab if you want to mount your new array automatically on boot. You're done!