Re: Intel SATAII RAID 0 config

I assume I rebuild my kernel with this driver and then access it using what?



Bruno Wolff III wrote:

It looks like this was supposed to be copied to the list as well as myself.

On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 15:01:37 +0800,
  Hadders <fedora@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks Bruno and thanks Markku for your tip on the dmraid tool.

My complication comes in the fact that I want the RAID 0 performance for Windows and I want to dual-boot between Linux/Windows XP, so I'm looking for the hardware support to access the container for both Operating System.

You're right about the reliability of the RAID 0, but I already have two PATA disks that I use as a RAID 1, they function right now off the Gigabyte GigaRAID controller, which has them setup as mirrors. I could split the volume into an NTFS and ext3 partition, then just backup to it from either OS. Both drives are reliable and unlikely to fail unlike new, untested disks. I have used the software RAID in linux before and am familiar with setting that up, and yes, I trust it and know it's pretty good. But to dual boot the OS I need to use the hardware container the SATA controller provides.

Ideally, I'd like to migrate my existing FC5 setup to the new SATAII, I guess the beauty of new disks is that I can install them, configure them from my current FC5 setup and then migrate and fallback if it fails or keep trying as needed.

So I'm thinking the first thing to do is get my GigaRAID working. This is an ITE IT8212F RAID chipset.

dmraid doesn't seem to support this.

Does anybody have any knowledge of getting this chipset to work, gotchas etc..? Will I need to find some drivers, recompile my kernel for driver support and then try?

Bruno Wolff III wrote:

On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 09:57:41 +0800,
 Hadders <fedora@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But then I figured, hmmm, why not go to RAID 0 SATAII, performance will be sweet, and then I can dual boot between XP/FC

On a typical home system, you probably aren't being limited by your disk speed

most of the time. So you might want to use raid 1 instead of raid 0. You
will still get read performance benefits, but noit write performance.
However, in event of a disk failure, you can still use your system while
waiting for a replacement disk to arrive.

But had no idea how to do this for Linux, but have setup software RAID before.

One way to do is is to set up a custom partition configuration when installing

fedora.

1. All I need to do is add the kernel patch, but this will only let me see the SATA RAID container

Usually there are bios settings to disable raid in the bios and then you
should be OK without having to use a custom patch. Though I am not familiar
with your particular hardware, so you might really have to do that.

2. I must then use software RAID to create a RAID 0 array, as there's no RAID being done in hardware, because it's not really a hardware RAID chipset and that for Windows it probably just does its own software RAID with the driver provided, but for Linux lets you do this yourself, cause why reinvent the wheel?

Software raid under Linux is generally going to be faster than using cheap

psuedo hardware raid controller. (If you are going to bother with a hardware

raid controller you should get a real one with battery backed cache.)
If you are pegging your CPU with other tasks this might not be true, but
that isn't normal.

Software raid under linux is gennerally more flexible about how you are
allowed to mix and match partitions forming the array(s).

You aren't locked into specific hardware to get your data back. Typically if

a hardware raid controller goes, you need to buy a replacement from the
same company or perhaps the same card (which may not be produced any more).