[conspire] (forw) Re: SATA and Linux Raid on a Intel Desktop 945 board

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Andrew Jones <andrew-jones at lineone.net> -----

Reply-To: andrew-jones at lineone.net
From: Andrew Jones <andrew-jones at lineone.net>
To: 'Rick Moen' <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 11:19:08 -0000
Organization: Personal Email
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.6353
Subject: RE: SATA and Linux Raid on a Intel Desktop 945 board

Thanks for your email Rick. 

3 1/2 hours of sleep, sounds like me on a regular basis! 

I have found the information on Linux Raid but cannot see does this not use
any controller at all? 

Andrew

----- End forwarded message -----
----- Forwarded message from 'Rick Moen' <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 08:57:34 -0800
From: 'Rick Moen' <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Andrew Jones <andrew-jones at lineone.net>
Subject: Re: SATA and Linux Raid on a Intel Desktop 945 board

Quoting Andrew Jones (andrew-jones at lineone.net):

> Thanks for your email Rick. 
> 
> 3 1/2 hours of sleep, sounds like me on a regular basis! 
> 
> I have found the information on Linux Raid but cannot see does this not use
> any controller at all? 

The Intel 945 has an ICH7 South Bridge built right into the motherboard,
which is a quite respectable fakeraid chipset.  You can use that, or 
can use Linux software RAID ("md" driver), or can go spend serious money
on something like, say, a Tecram genuine hardware RAID card.  All of
those options are detailed to some extent on my page.

Linux software RAID is RAID done entirely in software (standardised and 
quite reliable open-source software that is provided with all Linux 
distributions).  Fakeraid controllers are chipsets that give some sort
of BIOS assist to some different variety of software RAID.  Hardware
RAID cards, finally, actually put the RAID stripe-management and
error-detection/correcting logic into dedicated hardware.

In addition to whatever RAID functionality you deploy at whatever level,
you of course must have basic hardware driver ("block device driver") 
support for whatever host adapter is connected to your hard drives.

As mentioned, with new hardware such as the Intel 945 desktop
motherboard, to ensure that you have that driver support, you will have
to use a pretty recent Linux distribution installer.


----- End forwarded message -----