My first RAID

[J_L]

Hi!

So I'm finally going RAID. I've got 2 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATA II on a Gigabyte GA-965P-S3 motherboard with "2 ports with RAID function supported by GIGABYTE SATA2"

I have never created a RAID system before and I seek some advice on how to configure it... I have the option to start from scratch and create a brand new system on the new RAID but i rather just clone my existing dual boot if possible. Any issues running a dual boot on RAID? What's the difference between software RAID and kernel RAID(if any)? how do i make use of the built-in BOIS support for the raid and does Linux support it?

I'm always thankful for the help you guys provide!

Cheers /Johan

[fangorn]

If you dont need windows to access the RAID, go for kernel RAID. There are quite some HowTo's out there how to move your current system to the RAID. In short: boot livecd with RAID support, mount your filesystems the way they have to be, tar them to somewhere else, build the raid, create partitions as you like, mount them appropriately, untar your backup, edit configuration (fstab, raidtab, ... maybe build an initrd if you use genkernel), reboot to your RAID system

There is support for SOME socalled BIOS-RAID chipsets (they are software RAID, originally dependent on the windows driver delivered), but if windows does not have to see the RAID; why bother?

As RAID is intended to raise data integrity (except from RAID 0, which I recommend only as scratch space for really big files you can easily reproduce) I would strongly recommend not to use a RAID both windows and linux can write to.
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