My place of employment has this under-utilized Enhance Technology R4SA EnhanceBOX 1U 4-Bay 4-port eSATA Disk Array Enclosure, with each bay having a 1.5 TB drive. You can see the back of it here http://www.scsi4me.com/enhance-technology-r4-sa-enhancebox-1u-4-bay-4-port-esata-disk-array-enclosure.html scrolling down. If I'm understanding the configuration in order to get a RAID 1, I'd need a 4 port e-sata controller. However we have a 2-port e-sata card and so far I've tested one of the drives and I know it at least works. If I were to use just 2 drives how can I get them in a RAID 1 mirror? We are on Fedora so is mdadm the way to go? I see a tutorial here https://fedoramagazine.org/mirror-your-system-drive-using-software-raid/ and here https://www.howtoforge.com/software-raid1-grub-boot-fedora-8 I also take it I'd have to start from scratch?
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So I'm answering my own question. I purchased an extra e-sata card from Think Penguin, the TPE-PCIESATA, as others I've tried do not work on Linux. I also had to purchase a couple 6' e-sata cables. After a reboot all 4 drives appeared via fdisk -l. Running a smartctl on one showed it was completely failed so I had a spare and replaced it.
I posted on the Fedora forums and got the hang of mdadm. I followed the excellent write up by software engineer Jean-Christophe Berthon and I was in business! A decent 2.8 TB software RAID10 for the cost of 2 $49 cards and $6 cables...
RobbieTheK
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