I just bought a new Intel mobo with 2 WD hard drives. I've configured the motherboard's onboard SATA RAID controller for RAID 1. I can install CentOS 4.2 without any problems, but during the first reboot after installation the system hangs. I just get a black screen with a blinking white cursor. If I disable the RAID array and install CentOS to just one HDD it works perfectly fine. Do I have to configure a software raid, or is there something else I need to do? Right now I'm just creating the RAID arrow in the motherboards firmware, and performing a standard CentOS installation with no software raid.

Thanks.

The motherboard does not have a true hardware raid controller. What it sets up is fake-raid which can be accessed in linux using dmraid (see “man dmraid”), but it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

If you only plan to use linux or don’t care about fake-raid in windows, then set up linux software raid. Or buy a true hardware raid card (i.e., with an onboard processor).

Ok, so I should be able to still use a RAID 1 array with my current setup, provided I configure a Software RAID during installation? I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the feedback.

That’s correct, ignore the presence of the onboard fake-raid controller and set up a software raid through CentOS.

The first time you installed CentOS, it probably installed to one drive, as though the fake-raid wasn’t there. But when you tried to boot, BIOS only reported the fake-raid as being present, so grub couldn’t boot the installation.

Before you do another install, turn off the fake-raid at the BIOS level.

Some fake-raid controllers will only report the drives in BIOS if a fake-raid is configured, so you may need to configure each drive as a 1-drive raid0 to get them recognized. I’ve seen that mainly on Promise fake-raid cards.

I think I'm gonna go with Option 3. I'm going to install CentOS to one drive, then purchase a hardware RAID controller. I'll look into either Arco, Adaptect, or Promise. Once I get the RAID controller in, I'll use their mirroring software to mirror my existing drive, to my backup, then I'll have my hardware RAID 1 array ready to go. I've used the Arco duplidisk in the past with 2 PATA drives and it worked great. I think I read that they finally have a SATA controller available. Thanks again for your help.

Keep in mind that very few of the so-called raid controller cards are true hardware raid.

For example, Promise doesn’t make a true hardware raid controller card (unless I somehow overlooked it), whereas their external raid subsystems are true hardware raid.

If the card doesn’t have a processor on it, and I’m not talking about a “XOR engine”, then it cannot be a true hardware raid card.

Thanks for the heads up. I won't waste my time shopping for Promise cards. The Arco duplidisk is expensive at $300, but from what I understand it is a true hardware raid system. I used one of their older models on my old Redhat 7.3 server and it worked great. I also liked how it had indicator lights and a warning buzzer to let you know when a HDD crashed or became corrput. Hopefully their new SATA version works just as well and is worth the $$$.