[ale] onboard RAID

Steve Throckmorton ttwelve at yahoo.com
Tue Nov 6 09:32:27 EST 2001


I'll keep researching this on my own, but thought I'd check on the list for a
first take on this:  I have purchased an MSI motherboard with onboard RAID
(Promise 20265r).  I understand that RAID requires drivers to function
properly; naturally in Windows this is no problem.  Promise makes Linux drivers
available, but they are closed-source, and only for Caldera, Red Hat, and Suse.
 I have no problem with installing one of these distros as a stable system for
development, internet access, etc. but would like to leave open the possibility
of a third OS to play with and learn from (a BSD or another Linux).  I'm told
that in to absence of RAID support the mobo provides standard EIDE drive
support, but therein lies my confusion:  If I set this thing up to run in RAID
mode 0 in Win98 and Red Hat, what will it do with the partition for the third
OS?  

I can think of several possiblilities:
--Most likely and best:  files are striped just as if using RAID, but disks are
only accessed one at a time instead of simultaneously
--Less likely and worse:  files are not striped, disks are accessed one at a
time, but at least the entire partition (which I assume is split between the
two drives) is available
--Least likely and worser:  only one drive is available to that OS, and if the
partition is split between the two drives, then only half the partition is
available

Anybody got a clue?

Steve T.

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