[Eug-lug] Experiences with SATA RAID?

[Steve]

On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 15:28 -0800, Jason wrote:
> Hello list:
> 
> I am about to muck with sata drives for the first time
> and will need to run a mirrored set (raid 1). For
> folks who've used sata before, is this typically
> something available via the bios, or will I have to
> resort to a hardware sata card capable of raid? (I
> would prefer hardware raid to software).
> 
> Thanks for any info,
> Jason

Carefully look at the selection you make. I have an MSI K8T Neo (AMD64)
board that has hardware SATA RAID built into the VIA chipset (VT8237).
VIA has been really slow about producing a proprietary Linux driver and
for the longest time refused to open it up to the community. When they
finally did open up it wouldn't support (or even compile on) 2.6.x
kernels. There are some patches out there that claim partial support but
this isn't a test system so I'm reluctant to try it out. I'm using
software RAID1 for now and have no complaints (except the boot loader
issues).

Best bet is to look at the kernel docs and config to verify the
controller you want/have is supported.

-- 
Steve <euglinux at nwtechops.com>