Ubuntu & RAID

[Greg Michalski]

>Jacob Piotrowski wrote:
>> Stephen,
>> 
>> Most "hardware" RAID controllers on motherboards are in the end
controlled
>> by software inside of Windows XP and not true hardware RAID controllers. 
>> I have run into this in the past.  I know there is limited support in
>> Linux for some of these "hardware" controllers, but support is very
>> limited and flaky at best.  If you Google the model number on your RAID
>> controller and Linux you maybe able to see if their is support for it.
>> 
>> Your best bet is to add another drive to your machine (drives are cheap
>> now anyways), leave it out of your RAID and use that for Linux.  If you
>> want RAID for your Linux on the cheap, get two small drives and use the
>> Ubuntu Alternative Install CD.  This will allow you to configure a Linux
>> software RAID, which in my experience works pretty good!
>
>Unfortunately, it does leave one potential *big* problem.. If Ubuntu
>does not recognize the software Raid that is being used by Windows, when
>it mounts one of his Windows drives (does Intrepid mount rw by default?)
>, it can only lead to tears if any changes are made to the drive that
>put the volumes out of sync.
>
>Sorry, I have no good advise on how to proceed.

One of my systems has a fake-hardware RAID array and a solo disk with XP
installed using the Promise driver disk.  I installed Ubuntu onto the solo
disk and choose the boot device (RAID or HDD 1) from the BIOS menu to decide
which OS I boot into.  Ubuntu has never tried to mount the fake raid array -
doesn't even show it exists.  YMMV.

Greg
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