Hi Lyvim, > > I've got a mainboard equipped with a Highpoint 372 IDE RAID > controller that > > I'd like to use simply as an extra IDE controller (i.e. not > hardware RAID.) > > If I can get this to work I plan on creating a soft RAID setup > between it > > and a (non-boot) partition on my primary controller. I had > considered simply > > using the secondary controller but I really need to have a > CDROM drive on > > one of the channels and the docs I've read on soft RAID > indicate this will > > really kill performance. > > The documentation I have read concerning soft raid and negative > performance related primarily to using a slave IDE drive as part of a > RAID 0 array. That is indeed a no no. But, if the periperal is not > involved in the striping or mirroring (such as a CDROM) it is not likely > to impact your performance. I have had such a configuration and have > not seen any significant difference between having a slave CDROM device > on or off the bus. YMMV, but not likely. > > The main thing to remember is to never integrate anything as slave into > a RAID array. Since the CDROM is not a part of the RAID array proper > (i.e, it's not striped or mirrored), it does not fall into that > category. Just because it's plugged into the IDE cable does not make it > part of the RAID array. > > Synopsis: Slaving the Cdrom should be OK. >
That makes sense as I recall civileme describing a quite elaborate soft RAID setup on a board with only 2 IDE channels. But am I remembering correctly that having a slower device (my CDROM is ATA33 while the disk is at least ATA100) on the same channel mandates that both drives operate at the lower transfer rate? SCSI, at least once upon a time,worked like this. Has this been an issue for you (balancing the increased speed of the raid against the slower disk speed)? Or this just the case when both devices are being accessed at the same time? > > If I turn on RAID support in BIOS the 8.2 installer hangs up right after > > detecting the controller. If I leave it off DiskDrake (during > and after the > > install) doesn't appear to see the controller or the disk > attached to it. > > You do not turn on RAID support in the BIOS if you are going to do soft > raid on the Highpoint IDE controller buses. Bios Raid is left inactive > and Linux does the soft raid. > > There is a significant performance advantage in using the Highpoint > controller to drive your RAID array over the generic IDE bus. It's > faster. Right and I'm only bothering with this because I need this box to be as fast i/o wise as it can be and the hardware budget has already been spent for the year... > > > I'm guessing I may need to provide some arguments to the boot loader but > > haven't been able to figure out what they ought to be. > > > > My board is an Abit NV7-133R, an nForce 415-D chipset, but Abit > has a few > > other boards with the same Highpoint controlller that use non-Nvidia > > chipsets. > > > > Anyone have any ideas? > > Deactivate Highpoint raid and do soft raid with the Drake installer. > > This is what I figured I ought to be doing--leaving the RAID disabled in BIOS--but, as I indicated, DiskDrake does not see the Highpoint controller's IDE channels at all. Do you know if there a secret handshake I have to give DiskDrake to get it to see the controller? cheers, ::mark P.S. I dug around and found the Configure.help file in /usr/src/Linux/Documentation for 8.2's default kernel (2.4.8) and it talks a bit about the Highpoint controllers pre-372. I'm beginning to think that the hpt372 just isn't supported yet. At least not by name. Highpoint has a page talking about the Linux version of their hardware RAID driver which suggests the driver for the 372 and the 370 are mostly the same. But I'm not entirely convinced because with RAID enabled in BIOS the installer spews out some messages indicating it thinks it's dealing with a Highpoint 370 right before it locks up.
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