Linux Hardware RAID Configuration

[George Toft]

I have the same mobo and am using the RAID1 feature.  Works fine with no 
drivers.

Here's how to test your RAID, since you don't have any critical data 
yet.... pull the SATA drive cable off one drive (sata0) and see if it 
boots :)  If it boots, then it's working correctly.  Reattach the cable, 
reboot, and let the mirror rebuild and repeat for the other drive.

Having used hardware and software RAID, I am a firm believer is software 
RAID for the following reason:  You can monitor the status of the RAID 
set via the Linux proc filesyste and generate alerts if it ever breaks. 
  With this Abit board, I have no idea if the RAID set is broken or not, 
except to watch BIOS as it reboots.

There is some pretty good support for S.M.A.R.T. in Linux, and you can 
use that to monitor the health of the drives.  Combine that with /proc 
monitoring, and you will have a pretty good monitor for your hard drives.

George Toft, CISSP, MSIS
My IT Department
www.myITdepartmentAZ.com
480-544-1067

In business, there are always problems.  It's how they are handled
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Jeff Garland wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
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