Setting up a Dual Boot with hardware RAID (HPT372)
 

I know there is a similar thread going on now, but it seems my problem is a little more complicated at the moment.

I'm trying to set up a dual boot WinXP / Red Hat 8.0 system with a RAID 0 array containing 2 WD 80GB hard drives.

The general procedure I've come up with from different sources is "install XP first, then Red Hat." XP installs fine when I give the install program the driver disk (which only contains Windows drivers). Red Hat installs "fine" in that it looks like everything is okay until you get to the partitioning point. Then I notice that it sees my RAID array as being one drive of only 80GB. (When I originally partitioned for XP, I only left 10GB of space for Linux).

Anyway, I've been trying to get Red Hat's installation to "see" my RAID array using the procedure for HPT370 in the previous thread, but with that procedure the installation program doesn't "see" any drives at all.

Is this whole setup just too complicated for Linux?

I forgot to mention, Red Hat's normal installation procedure "sees" the array as having 80 GB of FREE SPACE to install on, when there's only 10 GB out of 160 GB of actual free space.
(And yes, I can install successfully onto that 80 GB, but it ends up screwing over the WinXP partitioning)

Re: Setting up a Dual Boot with hardware RAID (HPT372)
 

OK



Hummm it seems that you had a try installing redhat with the original CD and when it asked "You want to init the hard drive XXX?" you have pressed "YES"...

You must NEVER say "YES", ... when you say "YES" the installer drop ALL the data of this hard drive.

Now you have at least 1 HD of your array without any data. (So ... the other one is invalid)

I suggest you to drop the array, build a new array, reinstall windows xp and have an other try.

IMO, it is easier to install two or more OS on seperate hard drives. If you still want to take the route and put Windows XP and Redhat on one hard drive. You will have problems. If your boot loader is not set up right, it will have problems booting to Linux. Windows XP may not boot up too. I suggest for an easier installation is to forget RAID and use one hard drive for Windows XP and the second hard drive for Redhat. RAID may look good on your feature list to your friends and relatives but it does slow down the computer if the controller doesn't have a processor to handle the data. The controller will use your processor for the data handling and it will slow down your computer.

Easier, ... thats posible, ...

Unless you select your os from the bios you are in the same problem... you need a boot loader, ...

The people still buy sound card that really don't decode AC3 audio by hardware, ... why? ... really this is not a a lot off cpu load.

You can read all the benchmarks about the linux softwareraid code, ... it consumes a little bit of cpu and only at a really intensive work. Softwareraid is really far from software modems. (Do you know that I have a 60MB/s of transfer without buffer-cache?)

sharkyr0lz, you really like to push people out the door.

Hard drives prices are comming down so getting two hard drives or more should not be a problem.

AC3 is not hardware decoded in A/V receivers this includes more professional models too. All decoding is done by a DSP. Creative Labs and other new brand name sound cards has DSP that can decode AC3. The drivers programs the DSP to process the audio to anything that the programmer wants.

sharkyr0lz, Kashra is using Windows XP. Software raid may seem fast in Linux/Unix but in the Windows world software raid will be slow. It may decrease performance if he or she is playing a game or any high data accessing and processing.

Benchmarks are just numbers that tells you crap. Who looks at benchmarks?

I have transfer rates of 66 megabytes with out a buffer cache and with out raid. This not evening trying to use hdparm to tweak, no re-compiling of the kernel, or no hard drive interleave adjustments.

sharkyr0lz, when you were new into the Linux world. Did you make it hard on yourself installing Windows ME/NT 4/2000/XP and Linux on a raid controller or did you get another hard drive. I rather buy two hard drives and learn linux instead of pulling my hair out. Then forget Linux all together. I did use two hard drives to install Linux on one (using controller from the motherboard) and windows (using either the same controller from the motherboard or a 3rd party controller) on another hard drive. If I had to do it over again on another computer I will do the same as the first time.

So you suggest 3 or 4 hds ? :D


I know,... I was trying to say that people don't keep that in mind when buying this hardware.

You must try that controler before say this.


In the benchmarks you can know the cpu use with lots of file sistems, ... I look at them.

Thats posible witch is your HD ? How mutch it costs? Is SCSI ?
Did you tried this with hdparm -tT /dev/... ? / ... sisoft sandra?

(I am really interested on this)

My separate HDs read 32MB/s without buffer-cache and my raid ~=x2



When I where new i installed redhat on 1.2 GB HD with muy windows95 (so new :) ).

Whell thats a way to do this,... but, ... keep in mind what 1st "Kashra" whant to know:

__________________________________________

shark

Well just to clarify, I am not using a software RAID setup. I guess I must not have made that clear, but I have a hardware RAID controller on my motherboard (HPT 372) and its perfectly capable of handling my simple RAID 0 striped array--and giving substantial performance gains in WinXP.

As for Linux, it turns out that the problem was with support for the HPT372 hardware. Just another example of why Linux hasn't made it to the mainstream. I managed to install 8.0, finally, using an incredibly roundabout method that left a sour taste in my mouth, but being that I need to have *nix capability to run the scientific software I have, I don't have much of a choice.

Thanks anyway, I have them both running on the same array now. :)

HTP370/372 is an software RAID controller. Its not very powerfull as the RAID controllers with on-board processor but it gets the job done by some help of the main processor.

To answer sharkyr0lz's questions. My hard drive is an IBM 75GXP 20 GB with 7200 RPM and 2 MB cache. It was hooked up to my ABIT KA7-100 with 80 pin IDE flat cable. Since my KA7-100 stopped working I got a new motherboard (ABIT TH7II-RAID) and used the hard drive to be use as my Windows drive. I also have IBM 60GXP 40GB for video storage hooked up to the HPT370/372 controller. Right now I'm getting the KA7-100 motherboard repaired.

I suggest having hard drives laying around the house but I'm wondering how many drives can Linux handle. I know for a fact that DOS can only handle 26. I'll do a search in this forum.

Oh okay. It seemed people were thinking I was using WinXP or Linux to set up my RAID through them.

well, i have the same problem.
i want to have a dual boot with win2000 and debian woody, but debian shows the same weird partitioning error.
what workaround did you use to get your rh 8.0 installed?

greetz, rX

Look at: http://www.terra.es/personal2/capullator

By the moment i didn't made a woody boot disk, ...

While i am waiting for my new CPU I cant compile new kernels for distros like woody or gentoo,... sorry :(

well,
redhat or mandrake bootdisks wont help me. anyway, thanks for this tip. i will compile a new kernel for a selfmade woody bootdisk on my laptop after work. if this works, i can provide images of these disks if anyone needs them ;)
but first i need to compile a 2.5.45 kernel *shrug* for my fileserver. problem with ide raid controller too (sil chipset ;) )
i think i have not much luck in choosing controller because this is the forth that made me problems =) (one intel dual channel u160scsi raid, three ide raid)

greetz, rX

update

kernel 2.4.20-pre10-ac2 is running fine both with the onboard hpt372 and the sil chip based pci controller.
unfortunatly i cant provide the bootdisk because the kernel is fitting only for my machine, but perhaps i will create a debian netinstall iso image with that kernel and all possible modules
if someone is interested, just tell me

greetz

Actually i'm not using linux (because THIS computer is not mine), when i get all my components repaired i can't test newer kernels, ...

So, ... did someone checked the 2.4.20-rc1 ?