Abit nf7-s Sata raid 0 : not losing data, possible?

Asd--- · n00b Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 3

I'm trying to install a Linux distribution for the first time, without knowing personaly no one who use Linux, on a sistem whit windows xp. I have two Maxtor serial ata hard disk on my pc and they form a raid 0 stripped set, when I try to use the gentoo linux 1.4 cd I can' t see any hard disk on my pc, even if I add the doataraid option when I start Gentoo, and also Knoppix 3.3 live can't see any hard disk. Thanks to this beutifull forum I understood that a lot of Raid sistem exist, same software and some hardware, and that a lot of them aren't automatically recognized by Linux, expecialy those which use serial ata disks, so I think that my problem lies in the Raid set, but I won't delete the Raid set because I have a lot of videos on the ard disk aquired whit my video card and a lot of other importants data, and to keep using the raid 0 under Windows xp(I have readed that under Linux I can use a software Raid just compiling it into your sistem, but I don't think this would be possible even buying some software), and because I don't know if I can install Windows xp alone after losing all the data on my hard disk, since I never tried.

Someone knows of a way to install gentoo without deleting the raid set(or at least without losing all my data) and possibly without buying a new hard disk?
Is there any way to resize a raid set like I resized my ntfs partition to free the space for the partitions dedicated to Linux?

ReD-BaRoN · Apprentice Joined: 06 Feb 2004 Posts: 208

You need to find the driver needed for you raid card. Get the manufacturer of the card, and you should be able to find the driver unless it's a really obscure card. Once you find that, you have to find a boot disk/cd that will load that driver up for you, or will prompt you to load drivers separately.

biscuit · n00b Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Malaysia

I've abit nf7-s also and running raid-0 on win xp.

I've been searching the net for a while and have been talking to someone who wrote the driver for this Silicon Image raid thing and also some others who has tested the driver and some first hand experience.

The driver was working fine for raid 1 according to the author.

But since I was interested in raid 0 only, so I didn't explore further. Besides, I lost their contacts because I didn't access my mailbox for too long and everything there was deleted.

I've been reading doc somewhere in the net (probably from gentoo -- can't remember) but seems that there's experimental use. You'll need to use a setting that ensure compatibility with your existing win xp raid array.

I know my post doesn't help much but just to let you know there's hope and you can search around for sure will get something. Meanwhile I'm busy with some programming so don't have time for it.

Good Luck