does linux support hardware raid?
 

Have tried to set this up on my machine, my mobo is an asus A7V133, it has on board promise raid controller, raid 0. I set it up with 2 20 gig seagate hdd's same model raid 2+0 stripe. Linux installed ok no errors, but upon reboot lilo hangs at LI
any one know what i have done wrong? Or is it just not supported? I am using mandrake 8.1
currently reinstalled using the ata100 controller.

Re: does linux support hardware raid?
 

Hardware raid is supported by Linux.

If lilo is giving problems, try going with Grub. Grub is a lot more versatile and resilient agains all kinds of problems that make lilo just sit there and do nothing.

I believe when you're able to select if you want to use Lilo or Grub with Mandrake these days, right?

Linux does support many hardware RAID adapters. The problem is your Promise RAID controller is not a hardware RAID controller. It is basically an ATA-100/133 IDE controller with a few extra functions and a software driver and bios that handles RAID. Recently support for these devices was added into the Linux Kernel but I am not sure how well it works. The best way is probably to use the Linux software raid with that card, of if you really want real raid purchase a 3ware or Adeptec true hardware raid adapter.

Thanks for the help.

Is there a significant performance gain to be had from using a raid setup?

I think I will just do a bit more reading on this topic.

again thanks for the help.

I personally use raid only for the purpose of mirroring data incase of hard drive failure. However, a stripped raid array can increase performance.

Basically, the more disks you have data stripped over the faster you can get at that data, providing your raid adapter can handle the transaction. Using a raid card like the promise fasttrack somewhat defeats the purpose because it requires a lot of CPU work inorder to do the raid functions, so while it speeds up disk access, it uses CPU cycles. A true hardware raid does not use the system cpu at all, and typically can boast performance by a good bit depending on your raid configuration.