[Techtalk] Re: [Grrltalk] linux /ataraid (highpoint)

[Paul Hardacre]

On Tuesday, August 27, 2002 at 9:08 PM, "James" <jas at spamcop.net> wrote

Gonna divert this to techtalk..

> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002, Paul Hardacre wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> > The Linux Kernel that ships with RH7.3 (2.4.18 if memory serves) does
> > support the HPT-37x chipset.. However, it only supports it as an IDE
> > controller and, unfortunately, not RAID.
>
> If I have the right card, it IS only an IDE controller, not a "proper"
> RAID card. It just "looks" like a proper RAID card because it has a
> software RAID implementation for DOS and the BIOS stored in ROM...
>
> It is purely software RAID - just the same as you'd get under Linux with
> any other IDE controller, except for being able to boot from a RAID device
> (which you could get by booting from floppy, CD or network too).

Yes, and no.. I tried the kernel software raid under linux and compared
to the "software" raid provided by the highpoint cards there is a big
difference.. 15 mins to install RH 7.3 with the highpoint as opposed to
about half an hour with software raid. It does seem to be noticably
faster, certainly on the system I tried it on. The highpoint supplied
drivers do support raid mirror/stripe arrays and allow querying
their status, etc under linux (via /proc). There is also a RAID manager
application to run under X should you need it (haven't even installed
it, let alone looked at it myself). It seems pretty stable so far (touch
wood).

Paul