hpt3xx Software IDE Raid vs. Regular Software RAID

semiSfear · Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 302 Location: Adelaide, SA

First of all let me just say that I have been reading a lot of posts on Highpoint IDE RAID controller issues, and to be honest I have not become so much wiser.

Not to say too much let me just say briefly what I have done.
1: First I tried the Highpoint drivers (from their website) on my hpt372 controller. It worked great if I also compiled in SCSI disk support. Then I heard that these drivers were not so good performance wise, so I did...
2: Recompiled my kernel with IDE RAID Controller support and with Highpoint HPT37xx support, meaning modules ataraid.o and hptraid.o That didn't help at all. I had no new devices specially /dev/ataraid/disc... which was stated in a thread at the Docs & Tips forum. So I recompiled with HPT36X/37X chipset support. That created the /dev/ataraid/disc... device. So I partitioned the disks (2x120gb Baracuda ATA disks with RAID level 0). Everything works great until I reboot. At boot my comp jumps straight into the HPT BIOS saying the RAID is broken

So I did...
3: Recompiled kernel without ataraid.o and hptraid.o, enabled RAID and left HPT36X/37X chipset support on. Created a md device, partitioned and so on (note that at that point I didn't create a RAID array in the HPT BIOS).

So what I got now is a Highpoint IDE RAID controller running without any "hardware raid support" (I use " " as we all know that this isn't true hardware raid

so no more fuzz bout that k?). The IDE RAID controller just works as 2 extra IDE channels which uses Linux Software RAID level 0 a.k.a md device.

So is this a good choise performance wise, or should I try to get the Software RAID support working in the kernel (not the Highpoint drivers)? If yes anyone else had these problems.

Sorry for the long post but I believe that I couldn't make it shorter without leaving out important details. Thanks in advance.
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DnB is my religion, Jungle is my church.

semiSfear · Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 302 Location: Adelaide, SA

Come on someone should be able to know something considering the amount of posts about hptxx controllers. Please

I have also tried now with ac-source since I saw someone saying it should fix the whole IDE RAID issue, but no luck.

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DnB is my religion, Jungle is my church.