Q: Problems with nvraid (nforce 3) array with Mandriva installation
 

Hello,

I'm trying to install Mandrive LE 2005 64 bit edition (1 CD distro) on my Athlon 64 3000+ system, but I'm facing some problems.
The installation fails to see my already installed raid0 array with all important data on it. The harddrives get seen as 2 individual drives of 189 GB (I have 2 Maxtors 200 GB setup in a raid0). But I can see the Windows XP partition on them, while the rest of the space seems unallocated (but it ISN't!).
How can I ensure that I can run the install properly? Do I need to load additional nvidia drivers? Where? When? What drivers? :confused:
A helping hand could come in quite handy!

Sincere greetings,

driesel

I had exactly the same problem...
the solution i found was to disable hardware raid in the sata bios and use the linux software (md) raid (use the mandrake install to create linux raid partitions, add them to a raid set, then format and set the mount points of the raid sets).

This might cause problems if you want to keep your windows partitions (I completely wiped windows off my machine because the ntfs on my c: partition screwed up). Even if you can keep the windows partition you'll need to keep switching the sata bios to raid and back every time you want to boot into windows.

The problem seems to be (from my research on the net) that the raid controller on nforce (silicon image) doesn't do true hardware raid (its implemented in the driver) so linux still sees two seperate disks with it enabled. Everyone seems to say that the linux md raid is better anyway, and with it you can have different raid setups for different parts of the disk (/ mirrored but /home stripped etc.). Hope that helps :)

just found this page: http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html
which confirms that the silicon image controller doesn't do hardware raid - its implemented in software in the bios. The page also explains the difference alot better than i can!