After reading through almost all the threads regarding the raid issue, it seems that if one setup a raid 1 array using some type of a card, it would be detected under FreeBSD as a raid array or 'single drive' (ie. ar0, raid array ready etc) and that it would appear in the dmesg.
I however, have a HighPoint RocketRAID 454 with two Western Digital 200GB disks (I was hoping to boot FBSD off of these), setup a RAID 1 array under the bios utility program, and ran the FreeBSD 5.4 installer. I remember seeing two different disks when it came to formatting/partitionning but I thought nothing of it. Until of course, I wanted to see if there was a way other than rebooting to check the RAID 1 status. I started reading through atacontrol(8) and found that I could use 'atacontrol status ar0' which gave me:
atacontrol: ioctl(ATARAIDSTATUS): Device not configured

I know that this is not a 'real' raid card and such, but from what I've read, it seems that you are able to boot off of a RAID 1 array. I could be wrong.
Anyway, it would be great if someone could help me out.
Thank you in advance.

Hercun

I found the following link:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=fre...7310428&w=2

So basically, what he is saying is that FreeBSD does not support any RAID array created by the bios utility?

hercun

I think I'm just going to buy a 3WARE ESCALADE 7006, it seems that it works well. I just need someone to help me confirm that there are utilities to monitor, notification of failure, etc. For instance, something like the adaptec scsi administration tool or the management software in ports.
Thank you.

hercun

http://www.3ware.com/support/downloa...eBSD&os=Driver

I use em at work under Linux, the CLI is interface or arguments, so its cake to build a cron'd monitoring script for array integrity checking.

However, just to throw in $.02 useless, hardware PATA raid one is kinda a dog. You would probably be better off under FreeBSD's software raid.

Cheers,

Finegan

eugenewg:

The cheap (i.e. ~$50) cards that claim to be RAID controllers, aren't. A "real" IDE raid (i.e. 3ware or Adaptec) is much more capable.

I have a Adaptec 2500A in the machine that hosts my personal domains and it works dandy (Currently running FreeBSD 5.4). It'll even do RAID5. Your idea to buy a 3ware is a good one, and you'll be much better off.

Ya I know that it is a cheap RAID card. I've spoke with someone on the FreeBSD mailing list and it appears to be a bug.
Thank you for replying thought.

Eugene