jdvb Posted February 4, 2004 Report Share Posted February 4, 2004 (edited) I have 2X 120Gb (maxtor diamond max plus 9) SATA in a striped raid set. And on one of the partitions stands windows XP. (ASUS A7N8X DELUXE Mainboard with SATA RAID controller onboard PCB revision 2.0). Mandrake seez both my HD sepperate (hde 240Gb en hdg 120Gb) and the first with the total capacity of both discs, the second with a 120Gb capacity. The first should also be sees as 120Gb, or even better just see the set as one Hd being 240Gb, as Windows XP sees it and as my hardware RAID controller tels me it is. All of my attemps to install on the first Hd have failled. I have been able to install normaly but cannot boot it afterwards. I have tried a lot there (boot flop and so on) but it just won't work. On the Windows partition is a rather large amount of video data that I wan't to keep (80Gb). So I don't wan't to lose my video and other data but do wan't to install Mandrake (or another distro) besides my Windows XP instalation. For this purpose I have reserved a 40Gb of Hd space at the beginning of my HD. I do not wan't to install on one of my harddiscs seperately for the loss of speed and data (80Gb video). Putting in a sepparate HD is not an option since I want to slowly reduce Windows XP and increase Linux (NTFS slowly smaller and /home slowly bigger). This is not really possible when only using a sepparate HD and that would also mean that I'd be wasting my hardware RAID controller. I am making use of the following RAID controller: Silicon ImageR Sil 3112A Controller with 2 ports Supporting RAID 0/1 Incasse anyone knows more about this problem, please don't heasitate to let me know. _________________ With kind regards, ;-) Jonathan Edited February 10, 2004 by jdvb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 4, 2004 Report Share Posted February 4, 2004 (edited) Hmm it is probably somewhere in lilo..... I have a RAID'd PC but its currently in pieces ... Perhaps one suggestion is to bypass the hardware RAID and use software. but somehow you need to get the raid metadata recognised.... I think the problem is it isn't loading the Silicon imageR module (whatever it is and if it exists) This is more a general Linux question and I really don't wanna discourage you but Mr. Google with the name and Linux might be a better way.... basically, unless one of us has that card then well have to google for it.... However, the guys and gals here are VERY HELPFUL.... I pounced on your post becuase you weren't getting any answers and like those before me don't know how to help..... If you google about and find some links etc. then post em here and Im sure well get ourt collectve heads together and work this out :D Even if you google and find the answer, don't forget to come back!!! Were usually more helpful but this is so specific to your hardware its difficult to help!!! As a tip change the thread name to include your controller name - that way if someone does have it and has it working it will attract their attention :D edits: Oh and WELCOME, how rude of me to forget!!!! Edited February 4, 2004 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdvb Posted February 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 And before I started posting questions on forum's I had alreddy tried google in case my question had already been asked before. All I could find is people trying to get SATA Harddisks working on this controller, not in a RAID set or using the software RAID only. These forums all end with the announchment that MD 9.2 supports my SATA controller wich also does the RAID thing. Perhaps it is not possible yet. That would only leave me forced to get a 3rd HD and use that for linux. This will however not solve my question here, since it is my goal to slowly get rid of winXP and only use Linux. This while not loosing any data stored on my RAID 0 set. But just as important I think is that a software RAID set makes use of more processor power and therefore slows my computer down. Thanks for welcomming me by the way! With kind regards, ;-) Jonathan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdvb Posted February 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 When I would make use of a 3rd HD how can I let it boot? I can't use MD to write on the RAID set to create the menu to enable me to choose what system I wan't to boot. How can I fix this problem? If this still can't be fixed even a 3rd HD makes no scense. If I put the boot menu on the 3rd HD it will say that there is no bootable system on the other twoo HD's (RAID SET). Already tried that. Can I put an extra option in the existing boot table using MS WinXP? If yes how? With kind regards, ;-) Jonath Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 10, 2004 Report Share Posted February 10, 2004 Johnathen, SW RAID 0+1 is a trivial algorithm. You might notice it on a 486 but a newer machine is unlikely to take a performance hit. Raid 5 is a different matter though! Anyway, if your using HW raid I would expect that Mandrake should see the disks as a virtual disk. That is it should be unaware that its a RAID set. (This seems to have been Daleks response to what I guess was your question at linuxquestions.org) I think it will probably take some tinkering about.... However, If this were ME I wouldn't be experimenting with the live disks.... Why not try booting from a floppy instead and then defining the /root as /dev/hdc1 ?? Or take the disks out and put in the new one.... Install Mandrake and make a boot floppy. Edit the /etc/fstab and lilo.conf to /dev/hdc1 instead of hda1 and then put the RAID set back in and boot from the floppy!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pzatch Posted February 11, 2004 Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 Putting the boot loader on a floppy should work quite well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdvb Posted February 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2004 (edited) First of all I currently only have two harddiscs in one RAID set. So I don't have a /dev/hda or /dev/hdc I only have /dev/hde and /dev/hdg. That is the problem because this should indeed be seen as one harddisc (that is how WinXP sees it). And I am afraid that when I remove my current HD's that my RAID set will be gone and I lose all data. Putting the operating system on a 3rd harddisc would not be a problem, booting it would. I already have a different system running on MD 9.2 that is almost identical to my system except for not being overclocked and not having SATA harddiscs (just one tiny 17.4Gb HD). Here everything functions normally The question ectually is if and how Linux (from 3rd HD) can be added to the existing windows boot record (on RAID set). Booting from floppy or 3rd HD won't make a difference since in both cases you will need to be able to access the RAID set in order to be able to boot from the RAID set (winXP). I do not see it as an option to switch cables (RAID set loose and installing 3rd HD and the other way around) every time I wich to switch operating systems. with kind regards, Jonathan van Bochove Edited February 11, 2004 by jdvb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdvb Posted February 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 (edited) Only inserting the floppy when I want to boot linux is an option of course. That should indeed work. That would mean installing Mandrake without a boot loader and installing that separately on a floppy disc. And there is plenty of stuff written on forums about doing that, so that should not be a problem. I am going to try that. But first I need to buy that 3rd HD. Getting linux to run on a 3rd HD will however not completely solve my question. When it is running I want to be able to use data stored on my RAID set from out of the linux operating system. Another option for being able to solve this (not a perfect solution) is to put a large FAT32 partition on the 3rd HD so that both operating systems can write to it. I will do that but I still want to be able to view data on my RAID system (principle matter). This will make the question less urgent sice I will already be running mandrake. An advantage would also be that when mandrake would be able to read (and write) the RAID 0 set, that I could ad the 3rd HD to it to further enhance performance will dividing this virtual HD in several partitions. With kind regards, Jonathan PS. I know that when I ad a 3rd HD to my RAID set I will loose all data stored on it. Edited February 12, 2004 by jdvb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 12, 2004 Report Share Posted February 12, 2004 sorry if were not too helpful, This is one occaision when not having the hardware means we have to guess but you obviously have important data ..... On the actual RAID sets I don't know if you will be able to mix and match the filesystems so easily..... I have never done this myself except on single filesystem machines.... It should all be possible but my experience is BIG data storage machines ..... mainly Solaris. For various reasons ive always found HW 0+1 inapplicable to my work situation, mainly becuase we have always had to turn off caching etc. because of the average filesize .... (2GB) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuyo Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 What you want to do doesn't make any sense. Why? Because the cheap raid that comes with the SATA chipset is not really hardware raid. The Windows driver is doing all the work. Thus, Mandrake gets confused when it sees the odd partition layout that the sata-raid driver presents. Secondly, Raid 0 is a waste of time and potentially of your data unless you do tons of video-editing. If you want to do Raid properly, get a 3ware controller. The drivers are part of the kernel and work perfectly with all OSs. I always tell people to avoid getting Raid or SCSI built into the motherboard. Save the money and invest it into a card that you can take with you when you upgrade boards/cpu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 I tend to agree, I just didn't know how much HW raid and SW raid is involved on that card. Plus I agree on speed. You are limited in all cases to the spped of the pci bus = 33mhzx32 bit. Using two seperate cards on a decent server class PCI-X machine will giove better results becuase you have two busses and 64 bit. The fastest disk system I ever built was on a Sun E450 with 4 PCI busses and 8 SCSI cards. 100% software RAID (0+1) strpied across controllers and across busses) This was easily 200MB/sec on SCSI-2 and switching to SCSI-3 would have doubled this. I currently use RAID 1 on my test machine/since yesterday and its fine but RAID 1 gives no speed increase. However it clones perfectly, stick in a blank disk and reboot and it rebuilds completely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GodFlesh Posted February 20, 2004 Report Share Posted February 20, 2004 jdvb : Have you tried just to boot with the first CD of mandrake 10 ? With such new hardware, you should check latest version of kernel for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrenaline Posted February 27, 2004 Report Share Posted February 27, 2004 jdvb :Have you tried just to boot with the first CD of mandrake 10 ? With such new hardware, you should check latest version of kernel for sure. MDK 10 still has the same problem, I'm having the same problem as described with both 9.2 and 10 :( Has anyone found a solution at all? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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