How to Install Pop!_OS with RAID 1?

[Artesian]

I am RAIDing due to the desire to avoid as I can single point failures in my system. I know the RAID is not a true backup, that it halves the available memory, that it doubles overall wear and tear, and it negatively affects performance a bit. Nevertheless my decision is to RAID, so please avoid comments on why I would want to, and just help me do it.

I have a pair (two) of 12 TB disk drives, and another pair of 2 TB NVME M.2 SSD drives. I intend to RAID together each pair of disk drives. The RAID for both is to be RAID 1 Mirror. I intend that the SSD drives function as a cache for the disk drives using either bcache, or lvcache. I have 128 GiB ram.

The processor is an AMD Rhyzen 9, in a "Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero ATX AM4 Motherboard". I understand that AMD hardware RAID is no good. So I seek to software RAID using btrfs in Pop!_OS 21.10 (an Ubuntu based OS). There is this webpage about how to do this RAID:

https://mutschler.eu/linux/install-guides/pop-os-btrfs-raid1-20-04/

My questions:

1. How would these instructions on the webpage be altered to accommodate the two RAIDed drive pairs instead of just one?
2. What would be an appropriate size swap partition size? Since the encrypted swap partition is to be used for RAM memory overflow, my guess is it should be at least as large as the RAM. The intended use is video editing, heavy (memory wise) 3D editing using Blender, and combat in Second Life.
3. Can the encrypted swap partition's size be increased later?
4. Since this is a partition, and not a file, what happens should the swap partition become filled up during heavy usage? Would there be a crash?
5. Are bcache, and lvcache, set up after installation, or must it be done during installation just as RAIDing must be?

 

[Brickwizard]

Welcome to the forums,
you may not like this reply, have you thought of using a Linux alternative solution

An Introduction to the Z File System (ZFS) for Linux

ZFS is commonly used by data hoarders, NAS lovers, and other geeks who prefer to put their trust in a redundant storage system of their own rather than the cloud. It’s a great file system to use for managing multiple disks of data and rivals some of the greatest RAID setups.

www.howtogeek.com

 

[Artesian]

Welcome to the forums,
you may not like this reply, have you thought of using a Linux alternative solution

An Introduction to the Z File System (ZFS) for Linux

ZFS is commonly used by data hoarders, NAS lovers, and other geeks who prefer to put their trust in a redundant storage system of their own rather than the cloud. It’s a great file system to use for managing multiple disks of data and rivals some of the greatest RAID setups.

www.howtogeek.com

Thank you for your reply. I was not aware of ZFS.

I chose btrfs only because it had good reviews, and I found instructions on how to do it. I am open to zfs. Since I am doing it upon OS installation, and need RAID for the entire hard drive, I will need instructions on how to do it at root level when the Pop!_OS is installed. I just barely know what I am doing here.

 

[Artesian]

I found this thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/p1nci7

It describes how a Pop!_OS ZFS installation was done by modifying these instructions on how to do it in Ubuntu:

Ubuntu 20.04 Root on ZFS — OpenZFS documentation

openzfs.github.io

As a last resort I will attempt to do the same as maxorus
describes in that thread. Before I attempt this last resort I would appreciate any link, if it exists, to a version of those instructions for Pop!_OS I would that does not have to be modified.