Debian Lenny AMD64 and BIOS RAID 1?

worm5252 · 01-22-2010, 12:16 PM

Hey guys. Many of you know I am not new to Linux and I have been using Debian for a while. However I recently had a hard drive failure and lost everything so I am rebuilding my system from scratch and having to load my data from a back up.

This is the first time I have setup a Linux box using BIOS RAID. I have the following hardware

Motherboard: ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe
Hard Drives: 2x Seagate Barracudda 7200.11 7200 RPM 1.5 TB SATA (Model Number ST31500341AS

My Motherboard supports BIOS RAID 0, 1, and 10 on SATA Ports 1 and 3 and Ports 2 and 4. I have connected these two drive to Ports 1 and 3, Enabled RAID in my BIOS and created a container with both of the drives to use RAID 1.

However I am confused as when I was running my Debian Lenny AMD64 install and I got to the disk partitioner I saw /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. In my experience when you setup hardware RAID 1 you should only see 1 disk. However this is not hardware RAID, this is BIOS RAID (Fakeraid, software raid whatever you call it). I have not ever used BIOS RAID before.

I went ahead and created my partiton table as I normally would have on /dev/sda and did not do anything with /dev/sdb. Once done the install left the disk partitoner and went on with the install.

Immediately I have a few questions.

1.) If I setup BIOS RAID 1, does it matter what I do with the disk in the installer?
2.) Should I have setup /dev/sdb as a physical RAID Volume in the installer?
3.) Am I setting this up correctly?

If needed since I am still in the installer I can blowit away and start over to make this work. I would really appriciate the help

worm5252 · 01-22-2010, 12:37 PM

the install is finished and I am up and running. I am still open to reimaging if needed. I ran fdsik -l and it does not show a partition table on /dev/sdb

Code:

debian-desktop:/home/jared# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00085e18

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1          181673      182401     5855692+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *           1         243     1951866   83  Linux
/dev/sda3          120885      181672   488279610   83  Linux
/dev/sda4             244      120884   969048832+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

From my thinking this means my RAID 1 is not working. However I am unclear since the RAID is handled by the BIOS controller and not debian. Can anyone help?

toaster.waffle · 07-10-2010, 03:39 PM

I have a different motherboard but am facing the same situation. *bump*