[TriLUG] IDE Hard disk limitations BIOS and Linux

[Aaron S. Joyner]

Rick DeNatale wrote:

>On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:47:53 -0500, Aaron S. Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws> wrote:
>  
>
>>Yes, it works quite well.  :)  I would certainly recommend it from the
>>sheer perspective of separating out the drives onto individual channels.
>>    
>>
>I'd love for you or anyone else tell me how to use it.
>  
>
I'll do my best.  :)

>I decided to buy the drives, and the controller after confirming that
>I could return an unopened drive without a restocking fee.
>  
>
Even better optimization (with proper verification)!

>I installed the card and one drive. When I boot, it asks me to hit F3
>to get into the RAID setup utility. This only seems to allow creating
>raid sets.  If I escape out of this (or ignore  the prompt to hit F3
>it simply shows that the drive is in the 1st RAID set and the system
>never gets past that in the boot sequence.
>
>According to the specs RAID is supposed to be optional for this
>controller, but I've got no clue how to get around this.
>  
>
Let's assume for a moment, that you don't have any other drives on 
on-board controllers.  You're going to need to configure your BIOS to 
boot to the IDE raid controller, which depending on your BIOS may show 
up in various ways.  In an older BIOS, you may have to choose a SCSI 
boot option, which will attempt to boot to the controller.  The 
controller will boot which ever drive is attached as the lowest device - 
unless of course you RAID them up, in which case it will boot to the 
array itself.  If you want to do a regular install, go ahead and setup 
the CDROM as the first boot option, and go from there.  When you reboot 
to the drives the first time, you'll need to drop back and address which 
drive the controller is going to boot to, and you'll have a bit more luck.

Just to briefly touch the other side of the equation, if one of these 
drives is on the on-board controller, make that your boot drive, and go 
on with life.  You'll be in good shape that way, too.

If you're still having trouble, feel free to post again with more 
details and I'll see if I can steer you in the right direction.

Aaron S. Joyner