Linux Hardware RAID Configuration

[Jeff Garland]

Kevin Brown wrote:
>> So I'll goof around with the bios settings a bit to make sure I have 
>> them right.
> 
> Most of those onboard RAID systems for SATA are not Hardware RAID and so 
> the drives will still each be visible to the host OS.

I'm not sure if the ones on the AN8 qualify as 'real RAID'.  Basically 
it appears that the mobo has an NVidia RAID controller onboard.  The 
BIOS settings clearly allow for the full setup of RAID -- there's a 
special BIOS utility to define and configure the setup.  When I first 
boot the machine there's a message about 'valid array'.  It looks like 
this is all setup correctly.

I've been reading a number of postings on various sites about problems 
with this chipset and Linux although it looks like some have it working 
-- but it isn't clear.  When I run Knoppix startup in expert mode I can 
see an attempt to load nv_raid drivers which looks like it failed -- 
however it scrolled by a bit fast to really see -- I'll have to try 
again.  The other little tidbit is that it looks like these are being 
treated as SCSI drives even though they aren't -- there are some message 
to that effect and the Ubuntu setup as well.  Finally, after I boot 
Knoppix, QTParted still clearly sees them as 2 devices not one...

Maybe it's not worth goofing with the hardware RAID an just go for 
software RAID -- Linux can clearly do this. I would assume there is some 
performance penalty, but it probably doesn't matter -- this isn't for a 
high volume server or anything.

Jeff