Intel ICH9R RAID 0 Dual Boot?
 

Hi,

I have a P35 chipset motherboard with an ICH9R RAID controller. I have Windows 7 installed in a RAID 0 array, but would like to dual boot with a Linux distro.

I've tried this in the past with Ubuntu (either 7 or 8) but the installation program could only see the RAID array as 2 independant drives. I've also been advised that support for this sort of software RAID is flaky at best.

Are there any major distros that support this RAID chipset out of the box? Is there any way I can use the Windows drivers provided by the motherboard manufacturer?

Many thanks.

Ubuntu should work but you have to use the alternate install CD, and then it is probably the easiest way to go. You'll be using dmraid, not Windows drivers, thank goodness - yuck- the very thought! Google HOWTO RAID 1 ubuntu dual boot, and you should find the tutorial. Here it is
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

It can work quite well, not flaky at all: up until recently I had dual booting with XP SP3 with RAID 0+1 using Slackware 12.1, but that was considerably more work. There's a long thread about how do that here, as well as a HOWTO that was written about it (not by me).

I had nothing but grief from OpenSUSE 10.3 and 11 when I tried using them. You'd think with the infamous Novell/Microsoft deal that it'd play nicer with Windows, or that it'd be the best of the bunch, but no such luck, for me at least.

piphil,

Linux supports four types of raid now:-
1. Hardware raid. - You don't have this. It leaves a big hole in pocket.
2. Kernel Raid - this is not compatible with Windows
3. device mapper raid (dmraid) also called fakeraid as it looks like hardware raid but isn't
4. The kernel also supports Windows Dynamic Disks Raid.

You will need either 3 or 4. IF you went into your BIOS and made the raid set, its 3.
If you used windows dynamic disks, its 4.

In either case, the kernel will show you your separate drives and some weird errors both of which you should ignore.