Hi,

Does PATA raid0 work on 378 for 2.6.x

*or*

Does SATA raid0 work on ICH5 for 2.4.x /w enhanced mode (so I can still see the 378)


I have an ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe, and I want to do the following (please, no flames re: "fake raid" and "Promise is on the PCI bus dont use it" etc.etc.):

BIOS in 'enhanced mode'

ICH5 controller: 2 80GB SATA drives in raid0: boot drive /w XP

Promise 378 controller: 2 40GB PATA drives (on one cable/connector yes I know it is lame): wanna be linux drive

On-board generic IDE controller 1: 1 DVD-RW

On-board generic IDE controller 2: 1 CD-RW

The thing boots and runs in XP just fine.

I am wondering what I can do to make this thing boot properly. I will use any kernel at this point.

When I build a 2.4.x kernel, and build the Promise module (from Promise, with the 'un-GPL' .o), and insmod it, I can see the promise PATA raid. But these kernels dont like the ICH5 driver (which makes the kernel hang - see below).

When I build a 2.6.x kernel, with the built-in 378 support, it only seems to find SATA raid sets ? (I did not verify this, but it certainly does not see my PATA raid set). So it doesn't see the PATA raid set. So no go.

The problem with sticking with 2.4.x kernels is that their ICH5 support, when I load it, it hangs after printing that it has found the ICH5 drives, the kernel hangs (this is tried with 2.4.23, 2.4.22, 2.4.22-ac4). So I never get to the point where I can load the promise module. I tried loading ICH5 last, i.e. all as modules loading 378 first, but it still hangs in the drive detection. If I run in 'non-enhanced BIOS mode', then the ICH5 detection works fine *but* I then cannot see anything off of the 378.

The problem with the 2.6.x kernels is that they dont see the PATA raid on the 378.

Is there any kernel combo I can use to get both to be seen in Linux ? I can also load the Promise 378 in non-raid using their drivers, but they only seem to work on 2.4.x which still has the ICH5 problem. So it is not raid0 specific with the 378 drivers.

The question is really:

Does PATA raid0 work on 378 for 2.6.x

*or*

Does SATA raid0 work on ICH5 for 2.4.x /w enhanced mode (so I can still see the 378)

-patr

bump anyone have either working ? Is this a FAQ and so no one is answering ?

Yep, unless I'm missing something. I've got the 2.6.3 kernel and there's a promise driver built in. Shouldn't be too hard setting up an array after that using mdadm. Let me know if you've got any other questions. I know it's kinda hard to get help on raid since they're pretty new for most people.

The only problem you'll have is that linux won't be able to see the windows array since windows and linux set up raid's in completely different ways. Windows will just put the entire array in the partition table of the first disk in the array. Linux actually uses software that treats each disk separately and then combines them.

I've been trying for days now to get a dual boot XP/Debian system to boot off of the ich5r, but because of this difference in how the raid's get setup, I'm not having much luck. For now I've settled on having XP on the ich5r and putting Linux on the promise.