Subject: Re: Abit KT7A-RAID/HPT370/2.4.14 questions...
From: civileme (civileme@mandrakesoft.com)
Date: Sat Nov 24 2001 - 07:12:41 AKST
On Friday 23 November 2001 10:15 pm, Clay Scott wrote:
> i have an abit kt7a-raid on which i recently got 3d accelleration
> running. seeing as how it was such a pain in my arse last time i tried
> (about a year ago), i was really shocked at how easy it was. however,
> now i'm trying to get at least a raid0 array going with the on board
> HPT370 raid controller. let's just say that it's not proving to be
> nearly as easy.
>
> i've found conflicting reports of people getting it to work and others
> who have opted to buy pci raid cards to end the stress. i found some
> documentation that listed options to compile into the kernel which
> didn't do the trick. i've found drivers (ataraid.o) that aren't working
> either. i'm just wondering if anyone else has this board and if so, have
> they gotten onboard raid working in raid0/1 or 0+1? i'd appreciate any
> documentation, tips or tricks you guys can think of...
>
> thanks
> clay
OK You can use linux software RAID more effectively that the bastardized
fake hardware RAID native to the board. If you need compatibility with a
Windows RAID, then you can surf on over to www.linux-ide.org and look under
chipsets and find the link to the project art Sourceforge for these major
swindles.
What you really have is a BIOS extension that destrokes your drives to create
space outside the (user)accessible areas of the disk for time and date stamp
information at the beginning and end of the RAID physical extent on each of
the (required to be identical) drives The stuff at the beginning is useless
since LILO stomps all over it, but the stuff at the end keeps timestamps and
toggles which lie the fake RAID will tell about what is real and what is not.
That is the HPT 370 or the CMD 648 or the Promise FastTrak. The details
differ and so does the proprietary, secret, closed-source software.
Even though linux software RAID performs as well or better, allows multiple
physical extents to be separate RAIDs, and does not require identical drives
to operate, people seem drawn to the smoke and mirrors of the "hardware" on
these motherboards or plug-in controllers. They can only do RAID0 or RAID1
and they might actually be useful for Windows, but remember that you are
paying $30 extra for a PROM chip.
Anyway, there is a project on Sourceforge, but the mainstream linux-ide
support is just plain zero, as is probably proper.
Civileme
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