Linux: Advice on RAID'ing!

[feenster99]

Hi all,
From my previous post about a Backup Distro, I have settled with Fedora Core 5 (as I have some experience with FC3 so know my way around a little). I have it up and running sweet on an 80GB IDE drive.

I have a Promise TX2300 RAID SATA card with 2 320GB Seagate drives plugged into it. Now, I know the Promise card is "Fake Raid" - I have already setup the RAID 1 mirroring using it's BIOS, but FC5 won't see the drives at all.

Can/Should I just delete the array using the Promise BIOS, plug them into the card as simple SATA drives (in JBOD setup), then use this EVMS that I keep hearing about to put them into RAID 1? If I do that, should FC5 pick them up as new drives and let me format them, or do I need to do that bit first (if so, how!?!)

Many thanks,
Matt

 

[feenster99]

If you set up RAID in the BIOS then all the BIOS reports to linux is the pseudo drive which is the RAID array. The RAID 1 is provided by the BIOS rather than the operating system.

To software raid linux just use standard non-RAIDed SATA connected drives.

But can I connect them through the Promise RAID card but just leave them in JBOD (the default)? If not, do you think the Promise card might need a driver for FC5 to get it to show the pseudo drive so I can mount it? If so, I may be a bit stuck as Promise don't have a new enough driver. I can't see sight nor sound of the pseudo drive in Fedora.

I think having Linux do the RAID would probably be better anyway, as it would be easier to monitor (Promise don't offer a Linux monitoring tool I don't think).

Matt

 

[feenster99]

Just what I needed to know, thanks. Just need to look into EVMS now. Does it install into FC5 ok do you know? I've spotted packages for Debian etc, but no Fedora 5

Matt

 

[feenster99]

Thanks Nick. I've noticed the Logical Volume Manager in FC5 is quite weedy, so i'll give EVMS a shot.

Thanks for all your help.

Matt