Linux ATA RAID HOWTO

Murty Rompalli

RAID is not limited to expensive SCSI disks anymore as more and more motherboard manufacturers are introducing motherboards with onboard RAID support for inexpensive IDE disks, known as ATA RAID. Promise Technolgy and HighPoint are two companies that dominate this ATA RAID market. This HOWTO document explains how to install Linux on an Intel Pentium compatible computer with an ATA RAID Controller (onboard chip or seperate card), single or multiple processors and atleast two hard disks. Currently, this document covers installing RedHat Linux 7.3 with Promise FastTrak ATA RAID Controller. Appendix at the end briefly explains how to install on a system with HighPoint HPT instead of Promise FastTrak RAID.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Version
1.4. Printer Friendly Versions
1.5. Credits
1.6. Feedback
1.7. Translations

2. Requirements

3. Prepare Promise Driver Floppy

4. Preparing RedHat CDs

5. Installing Red Hat

6. Installing Native Linux RAID

7. Installing on an existing Linux system

7.1. Append Line
7.2. Determining the Append Line
7.3. Setting Up RAID 1

8. Upgrading Kernel

8.1. Promise Technology (ft) Driver with OS on RAID mirror
8.2. Promise Technology (ft) Driver with non-OS data on RAID mirror
8.3. Linux Native (ataraid) Driver with OS on RAID mirror
8.4. Linux Native (ataraid) Driver with non-OS data on RAID mirror

9. Disabling RAID feature on Promise FastTrak

9.1. Case 1: OS not using RAID
9.2. Case 2: OS is using RAID

10. Tips and Important Notes

11. For more information

Appendix A. How is this document generated

Appendix B. What if you have HighPoint HPT instead of Promise FastTrak RAID?

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