# Looking for some kind of guidance: geom_{stripe,bde}



## perlwiz (Feb 13, 2009)

Hi folks! This is my first post here. Hope I didn't post in the wrong forum. :\

I've got a FreeBSD Server in my flat which provides various services for my small homenetwork:

 Mailsystem
 Central database servers (Postgres/MySQL)
 Davical for my Apple Calendars
 And some kind of strange file serving concept including pure-ftpd, apache, samba, nfs....

The server has four 250GB S-ATA disks:

```
ad4: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250824AS 3.AAE> at ata2-master SATA150
ad5: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250824AS 3.AAE> at ata2-slave SATA150
ad6: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250824AS 3.AAE> at ata3-master SATA150
ad7: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250824AS 3.AAE> at ata3-slave SATA150
```
I'm not quite sure, why they start at ad4 and not ad1, but I remember back that those two years, when I've installed that machine I've read something reasonably about it.

I don't really care about the safety of my data, but striping four disks... There will be data loss, I guess. I'd absolutely have no problem to make 500GB out of those 1TB if there was a way to stripe and mirror together with GEOM. If there is no such way: No problem. I'll stick to geom_stripe (got the important backups on tape).

Now what I was wondering about: My current setup looks a bit dirty like that:

```
/dev/ad4s1a => /
/dev/ad4s1b => swap
/dev/ad4s1d => /usr 

/dev/ad4s1e.bde => /mnt/disk1
/dev/ad5s1d.bde => /mnt/disk2
/dev/ad6s1d.bde => /mnt/disk3
/dev/ad7s1d.bde => /mnt/disk4
```

Yes, you can guess that I'm absolutely not satisfied with that kind of setup. I was wondering if there is a quick and clean solution to undo the join the last three disks and the last slice on the first disk together to one big volume and setup geom_bde on top of that volume. 

I've got enough space left to temporarily move the data currently in /mnt/disk* to another machine. So I could setup those disks/partitions/slices from scratch.

What bugs me most: Are there any reasons I shouldnt do this?  And more importantly: Has anybody written some kind of documentation/howto on that topic?


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## graudeejs (Feb 13, 2009)

you can stripe, and put geli (and probably gbde as well) on top (i wouldn't do it though)

disks start with ad4, because you probably have some 4 unused (or with cd/dvd roms) ide, also depends on bios config

i have ide HDD as ad0, sata as ad4
with bios i can disable IDE at all, and have sata as ad0, but that is my bios specific


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