ArchLinux on a DockStar as a NAS controller

[schievelbein]

I love craigslist and picked up 2 new in box dockstars and 2 Mediastore HF2-SU2S2 harddrive enclosures. The interesting thing about the enclosures is that they hold 4 SATA harddrives and only need one USB cable (built-in hub). When I plug the units into my PogoPlug, they show up as 4X1TB drives. I would love to make the 4 drive RAID5 units and use them as Network Storage.

My plan was this and I am hoping that I can get some guidance or warnings if anyone has tried this similar in the past. I am hoping not to waste a lot of time if it will not work....

1) Take one of the DockStar and load Uboot and ArchLinux on the Unit.
2) Load dm-adm (does it exist of ArchLinux ARM), I could not find it.
3) Create RAID5 3TB arrays out of the units.

I was going to try FreeNAS, but it will not work on ARM.
Any suggestion and or guidance is appreciated.
I am a novice at Linux, but can follow directions.

Michael

[kmihelich]

1) Great idea!
2) The package is called mdadm.
3) See what happens. Worst case is that software RAID is too CPU-intensive for the device. But they do have hardware XOR functions (make sure you're running the latest kernel to use it) which will help a lot.