Hi guys!
I have a Dell XPSM1730 laptop with two 200GB HDD that can be hardware RAID 0 (stripping) or non RAID (normal separate disks) and maybe even RAID 1 (Mirroring) but I'm not sure about the last one... My question is pretty simple, but I suspect the solution might be complicated...

I would like to install openSUSE 11 and Windows XP Pro as a dual boot config, but using my disks as real RAID (not the fake raid or any software raid). Windows XP will install very smoothly on a physical RAID, but openSUSE does not seems to detect the hardware RAID, and during the setup, it list my two disks as /sda (186.2GB) and /sdb (186GB) but does not see ONE 372.4GB HDD... I'm confused on how to proceed... also for XP, how can I install it along openSuse 11? As you can see, I'm pretty much a complete newbie with Linux! (but looking to get rid of that CRAPPY windows forever.... Grrr)

Thanks and your help is really appreciated!

I am %99.999999...etc positive that you do not have real hardware raid (especially in a laptop). Most hardware that has 'built-in' RAID is fakeRAID(supported in hardware but all processing is done on system CPU).

I don't know what fakeRAID chip you have in your laptop, but sometimes the RAID drives will show up in /dev/mapper/... but if they aren't showing up in you're partition list, then you may be out of luck.

boot from a Live distro and use lspci to find out what the Chipset is on your 'RAID' controller. then you can determine what driver you may need.

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 PCI Express Root Port (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HBM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 82801 SATA RAID Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
02:00.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
02:01.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 01b3 (rev a3)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8700M GT (rev a1)
04:00.0 3D controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8700M GT (rev a1)
05:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
05:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
05:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
05:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter(rev 12)
05:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5754M GigabitEthernet PCI Express (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN Network Connection (rev 61)
0f:00.0 Class ff00: AGEIA Technologies, Inc. Device 0000


As far as I know, the RAID chipset is Intel Mobile 82801 SATA RAID... Any more toughts?

Hey Guys!

I did some trials yesterday, and here's what I've found...

In my BIOS, I have 3 choices for the HDD controller. Here's what I have + what the BIOS says (as help tip):

RAID Autodetect / ATA : RAID if signed drives otherwise ATA
RAID Autodetect / AHCI : RAID if signed drives otherwise AHCI
RAID On : RAID if on every boot

If I select either RAID /ATA or RAID /AHCI, and I dont have any RAID
array configured in the RAID controller setup screen,I will have 2 identical ATA or ACHI (SATA) drives... However, if I select the RAID on option in the BIOS, the RAID mode will be enabled, and I can setup an array in the RAID controller setup screen.

CRC123, I am now 100% sure you're right about the RAID chipset... it is a fake raid (Intel Mobile 82801 SATA RAID) that comes with the 965 chipset series from Intel. However, I couldnt install openSUSE 11 on my laptop. No matters which configuration (RAID or not, ATA or AHCI...) I select, the setup would drop during the HDD detection (at 60%) and send me in linuxrc telling me "An error occured during install"... What??? no error code, nothing else.... The wierd thing, is that Monday (2 days ago), I succeded to install openSUSE.... When I did, I created a RAID as "md0" and everything went fine... However, if I remember correctly, my controller was still "RAID on" but the opensuse setup was detecting 2 different drives instead of seeing 1 big drive like windows see... Any clues?? I have to admit, I'm a little confused....
thanks!!

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg03335.html

Changelog from dmraid 1.0.0-rc1 to 1.0.0-rc2 2004.07.15

o Intel Software RAID discovery and activation support




well dmraid is a point to start at.. Search for a Suse dmraid 82801 how-to

Thanks guys! That was very helpful, but after reading several websites that discussed about benefits vs hassle of configuring/using a fakeRAID in linux, I just decided to install everything over a non-raid setup.

Thanks again!

You can also try using the built-in software raid that comes with openSUSE 11 (I think it's called dmraid, and you can configure it through the disk partitioner). I would only recommend it for RAID 0 or RAID 1. There really isn't much performance hit in these modes and you don't have to Stripe or Mirror whole disks; software raid allows you to stripe/mirror by partitions.

CRC123, I am actually using dmraid with RAIDO and I didnt noticed a real performance improvement. I'm still looking forward to learn more on linux!

Thanks for your very precious help!