Use RAID cards as "normal" HD controller?

LittleHelper · 06-23-2007, 02:47 AM

I'm looking for a normal PCI IDE HD controller (parallel ATA) to use in my (quite) old Linux box - nothing fancy.

I checked the local stores and ebay.ca - those cards are hard to find.

RAID cards on the other hand seem inexpensive. I wonder, can a RAID card be used as "normal" IDE controller (without RAID)?

Or can someone point me to a store with Linux compatible hardware in Canada?

Thank you

dman65 · 06-23-2007, 09:08 PM

Based on my experience with such a card this week I would say yes, you can use it as a standard IDE controller. Most of the RAID IDE controllers were actually software based so the RAID operations do not take place in the controller, but in software. My SUSE 9.2 installation treats these as simply being IDE controllers. If you want to turn them into RAID you have to set up software RAID in Linux.