[CentOS] CentOS 4.2 and Adaptect 1210SA

Aleksandar Milivojevic alex at milivojevic.org
Sun Nov 20 04:54:49 UTC 2005


Ryan Lum wrote:
> Adaptec 1210SA with a RAID 0
> Intel 815 based mobo
> 512mb ram
> 
> During the install, Disk Druid or whatever the partition utility is,
> sees the first disk but says the other disk is not initialized and
> only reports 150MB when the array is 300MB.  How do I get the CentOS
> installer to see the RAID 0 array correctly?

Adaptec 1210SA is not real RAID controller.  It is not RAID controller 
at all.  It is fake.  Under Windows it uses driver that implements RAID 
in software.  Under Linux there is already software RAID driver provided 
by the OS, so this functionality from Windows driver is not needed.  If 
you look more closely to wording, you'll see that Adaptec calls this 
controller "HostRAID".  HostRAID is just Adaptec's word for fake RAID 
controllers.  It implies that RAID functionallity is provided by 
"host's" operating system in software.

If this is Linux-only box (not dual-boot with Windows), simply disable 
RAID in BIOS (which is fake anyhow), and use card as what it really is, 
just an ordinary SATA controller.  Configure software RAID using 
standard Linux software raid driver.  If you still can do it, replace 
card with cheaper 1205SA.  The difference between 1205SA and 1210SA is 
that former doesn't have fake RAID BIOS, and Windows device driver for 
it has software RAID functionality disabled.  Other than that, they seem 
to be exactly the same card.  You'll save yourself $25.

If it is dual-boot box, fake-RAID is still not supported at installation 
time.  If you are very experienced user (read: expert, wizard, guru), 
there is dmraid utility that can read out RAID configuration from the 
drives (the RAID configuration from the BIOS) and configure device 
mapper appropriately.  Otherwise, you won't be able to use fake RAID 
functionality in Windows either.



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