Well, I give up. I've tried Mandriva 2006 and Fedoro 4 and neither would boot after install.. Mandriva hung at with the last line saying GUMP and fedoro hung after spiting out 0101010100101.. so I am staying on XP =\

asus a8n-sli preminum
-> Silicon Image SiI 3114 SoftRaid 5 Controller

I was installing on 3 sata drives in raid 0

ok, enjoy xp

Is there a question in there, or are you just saying good-bye?

Here's a question: why won't linux work?

Well ... how is that RAID being set-up? Do you do that
from BIOS, do the installations pick that RAID up as a
single HDD or what?


Cheers,
Tink

raid is set up with bios. the fc4 say it has raid, formated it, and partitioned it and installed fine.. the mandriva did not have a raid option like fedora, but saw the raid the fedora set up and used it

I haven't got any experience with SATA-RAIDs, but a
quick google seems to suggest that the problem may be
with grub. Does MDK offer lilo as an alternative?


Cheers,
Tink

Try installing Linux on a PATA drive instead. Then copy it over to the RAID array after you have dmraid, raid, and controller modules in the ramdisk. dmraid will only work with RAID level 0 and 1. It does not work with software RAID level 5 which does take consider amount of processor resources with input and output transactions.

There is poor support for Silicon Image controllers. I am sorry to say, but use Silicon Image controllers at your own risk. I recommend Highpoint controllers such as model 1640. I do not suggest using any models above this because it may have the same problems that Silicon Image controllers have and many others.

After you get through all these problems, actually Linux is several times better than Windows XP.

Tinkster, Mandrake has support for both LILO and GRUB. By default Mandrake picks LILO. GRUB is easier to configure than LILO for novice Linux user.

>> was installing on 3 sata drives in raid 0
Is that wise? Is this possible? Just asking

Linux works. I have an asus mobo and as a newbie managed to get a raid 0 going
(see signature for the mobo) and this with mandy 2005 LE

Nearly same comment as already posted:
Boot from 1 sata and build a raid 0 with the 2 other drives if you fancy a raid

Have you looked at the mdadm manual?

I would avoid booting from raid 0 definitely a bad idea if you lose 1 HD goodbye!