Hello,

I've been seeking help for a while; I'm trying to install a linux distribution (tried Mandriva 2008, Ubuntu 7.10, Fedora 8) on my current laptop.
All is good. Well, except that the laptop is using a SATA RAID 0 mirroring array of hard drives. Following various guides around the internet, I still did not manage to pull it out.

Basically I have two 250 GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array, with one lonely NTFS partition with Windows XP that I can eventually resize. Each of these hard drive have a 16 char serial number (I don't think that matters, but hey) and boots/works correctly under Windows.

The RAID is BIOS-driven, I suppose (since there is a RAID option in the BIOS). Windows reports a Intel 82801GHM SATA RAID controller.

When trying to install, and using any kind of dmraid command (dmraid -r, dmraid -ay, whatever), dmraid doesn't like that and spouts the following.
Ubuntu recognizes two hard drives and Fedora kindly asks me if I want to delete all the data I have on the two hard drives (proper intel tells me the same thing as in the quote above).

It's probably a hardware incompatibility, but I don't want to give up on Linux yet, so I'm asking here. Already performed regular Ubuntu installations, and I have a medium knowledge of Linux (enough to vim up C files before recompiling them).

BONUS QUESTION: Is it possible to use the distribs on an external hard drive, even if the raid is not properly recognized?

Just a thought..
how are you disks formatted? are you using "dynamic disks" for RAID under windows xp; if so, I think you'll have to patch dmraid to handle the ldm disk format.

No ideas if I have a special format or "dynamic disks", but I've never heard of it if I do. Intel Matrix Storage Manager under WIndows reports the following:
I also have a diskette with the Windows RAID drivers (with INF and stuff) for my controller but I doubt that'll become useful under Linux. Might be wrong though.

Hmm, here are some other ideas:

what version dmraid are you using - there was a patch for the isw raid support for rc14...might need that
I'm also guessing that you've activated the on board ahci in the bios for raid support; I've read that the windows driver can get by without bios but that dmraid cannot.

what does windows dmadmin.exe say about the disks and partitions - anything unusual there?

Hope this helps, I'm using dmraid for dual booting with windows myself and there are a lot of gotchas...

I don't remember what version of dmraid is used; I've only took the latest package from Ubuntu (via Live CD).
I'll check the AHCI thing, but I don't think there was a choice in the bios I have.

The logical Disk Manager shows nothing out of the ordinary, showing the RAID array as a single disk. I have the choice to change it into a dynamic disk.

The version I was using was 1.0.0.rc13.
Built and used 1.0.0.rc14 with exactly the same results.

And as I thought, there is no AHCI option in my bios. Only RAID (on/off).

I found a patch to the rc14 for the isw controller; its a raid 0+1 thing, but might help?
try putting "isw error rc14 disk table slot" into google to find the patch....