Fedora linux and ICH9R

Evil-I · 3 Dec 2009 at 11:41

Hi all,

Does anyone know if Fedora 12 recognises a RAID array on the ICH9R raid chipset? In the past I've found that most on board raid chipsets are software or bios assisted software based and typically linux can only see thier component drives not the array itself.

I could do software raid within fedora but this is going to be a dual boot with Windows 7 so that also causes problems.

Any suggestions appreeciated,

E-I

BigglesPiP · 3 Dec 2009 at 20:04

Normally your RAID controller presents a SCSI device, and uses your CPU - via a RAID driver - to to the maths. ICH9R is pretty much software RAID.

Fedora can access the array using 'dmraid', this accesses the 2 or more drives individually and literally performs software RAID on them, bypassing the ICH9R chipset.

It's not particularly reliable, in that it can nuke your array. You're better off turning off the on-board RAID and just using Linux's software RAID, which is reliable. Unless you want a windows partition on RIAD too.

Evil-I · 3 Dec 2009 at 20:37

Thanks for the reply.

Just done some testing and fedora is seeing the raid array. Unfortunately I can't use linux software raid as its a dual boot.

I run RAID5 on a 3Ware Hardware raid card in my server where the data is much more important, my desktop on the other hand isn't so important. mostly used for gaming and playing with the newest linux distros so not a huge problem if its not the most stable, as long as it isn't crashing out every few days it will be acceptable.

Cheers,

E-I

BigglesPiP · 3 Dec 2009 at 20:41

Just remember, to install linux onto the RAID array, you're using dmraid in read/write mode, it if fudges up bad enough; goodbye windows partition.

My PC is in the same situation with ICH8R and RAID 0, I'm looking at another hard drive outside of the RAID setup for linux. I don't want to trust dmraid.