It is insane trying to sort through posts and find the best advice to get a controller to support RAID SATA drives.

Someone needs to just make a distribution of their own called SATAUX

with a kernel entirely dedicated to every RAID sata controller that modern hardware has to offer as fast or faster than it can dish it out to Windows .. .

There needs to be distribution software to do this

there just absolulely must be some divine calling among you techies to find it in your heart to be THE ONE . . . THE SAVIOR OF THE LINUX REVOLUTION

Just think . . . if you do that, you might just get the noble peace prize, or become the riches person alive, get elected president of the USA this November too for all we know. . . or even bring about a utopian civilization.

Imagine releasing such a distribution to the world and never see another post complaining about

"waa waa waa my Linux distribution won't work with my sata hard drive . .

"waa waa waa, this is suppose to be fun . . . I think I'll go weap with my Wndows machine. . . .


"waa waa . . . I tried this installer, this kernel, and this . . this waa waa waa . . no one seems to give advice I can understand . . .


it just get so old . . . we'd like to find something that works the first time we stick the distribution CD in the drive.

Bro - go for it. As they say, if you want something done right, do it yourself. -- J.W.

Hate to burst your bubble, but God doesn't really give a hoot whether you use a SATA hard drive, RAID controller, etc. Some of His best warriors never even owned a computer!

He does have something to say about grumbling, though...1 Corinthians 10:10

No you're wrong. I had a chat with God the other day and these are God's words:

"it seems you've invested a lot of time and patience getting a good bargain on some of the most outstanding hardware money can buy,
so you shouldn't spend another 50 bucks to install an extra old obsolete hard drive.

There must be a good Linux distribution to dignify the hard drive you have. Don't insult it by making it just another Windows only hard drive. Give it the respect it deserves.

- your friend

God.

maybe god should have given you this linj to help you:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/ATA-RAID-HOWTO/

Here's some new revelations about a situation I was witness to:

http://www.mwvlug.org/modules.php?na...wtopic&p=12#12

Hi,
System config:
Gigabyte 7N400Pro MoBo with integrated SiI3112A SATA RAID controller
512M DDR 3200
2 x WD1200JB SATA Disks in RAID 1 under W2k (as well as bios)
GeForce FX 128M DDR graphics
On-board sound & LAN

I have just started into this Linux thing a couple of weeks ago and am on a steep learning curve.

I managed to get Linux loaded on my system (Mandrake 10.0 after a bad experience with Mandrake 9.2, though that could have been my inexperience) - to do so I followed these steps:[list=1][*]at the initial prompt I responded with F1 and added these parameters to the boot: linux acpi=off noapic - got these from a forum[*]a friend suggested that the bootloader may not like the SATA RAID 1 array - I had an old drive so I used this for a /boot partition (540M but only using 32M for /boot)[*]hda contains the /boot partition, hde/hdg the SATA drives (in RAID 1 under bios)[*]partitioned up the remnants of hde for Linux - I knew I was wanting to try this so left some space [60G ;-) specifically for this]. hdg showed as a separate drive so no RAID 1 supported at this stage[*]worked through the install as per the wizard and installed the GRUB bootloader onto hda[*]re-booted and everything was good - except I sometimes get a STOP when loading W2k[/list=1]

Now I need to configure RAID 1 under software in Linux to keep the array in sync (I think this is the reason for the STOP errors). I have found a couple of howtos that may help. BTW I ran a hdparm -tT against the SATAs and got just over 50MB/s

Not bad for a 3 day effort. Will keep you posted as to my luck with the Array in Linux - quite optimistic though.

JK

i don't think that it is necessary to create a whole new distro to support SATA drives. however, i think it is absolutely necessary to improve the compatability with SATA drives in the kernel... that way all distros will benefit from it.

btw - what does the "noapic" parameter do?

from http://www.computer-dictionary-online.org

Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller

<integrated circuit> (APIC) A Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) that can handle interrupts from and for multiple CPUs, and, usually, has more available interrupt lines that a typical PIC.

Hey jknox, how did you solve the problem with raid 1 array, which was seen by the system as two separate drives?

Did you force the system to boot from RAID1 instead of using addional old hard drive for /boot ?

I am interested in solution, because I have the same problem. My SATA RAID 1 array is detecded by the Fedora Core 2 installer as 2 separate drives sda i sdb but i want it to be one single drive! It is set up in onchip controller (SIS) to be RAID 1, so why linux still has 2 different drives? The controller drivers were detected and installed by the system correctly.

Please, help me!

s.reluga@aster.pl.DELETE_IT

It may be that you are using a software controller. The kind that even XP sees as two different drives. If you want it to work in Linux, you will have probably have to buy a "real" hardware raid card, or use the kernels software RAID driver.

If I'm not mistaken, you don't need a separate /boot partition, if you are booting from a RAID1. You do need it for any other RAID level though, unless it's a "real" hardware controller. Real hardware RAID cards, start at the very low end, of 75.00 for a 0,1 controller, and just go up from there.

I've also found that Mandriva 2007.0 tends to setup even a both RAID and, non RAID ATA cards, as a device mapper, and either stripes the drives, or concatenates them into one large drive. (Same end result either way). Anyone know why this happens?

Most "SATA RAID" controllers are Software RAID aka FakeRAID controllers. RTFF: http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html In most cases, you can use dmraid to access the array. However, if you're not sharing the array with Windows, you'd probably be better off using mdadm --- unless you don't want to invest the time learning how to use mdadm. In that case, use dmraid.

Quite right. If someone reeeally wants a true raid card, then they need to look at something around the $300.00 mark. From what I have read 3Ware would be the place to start. I have been using mdadm for some time, and have nothing to complain about. Course I just use it for a RAID 0, but I'm not gonna see that much difference there switching to a card. Probably one of the only advantages, to using an addon card, is depending on the motherboard, you may get a better chipset than what you already have.
I use a dual PIII mobo, and bought the add on card, just to have SATA for mass storage. Mdadm, is a great tool, and depending on your usage, paired with the right file system, it's even better.
And for the lazy turds in the bunch, you can also administer md, with webmin, or the control center on Mandriva. Don't know where it would be on other distros.

Then again, I guess having a distro stripped down, and designed for the NAS market, with all the SATA drivers, installed, wouln't be a bad thing.