In the face of all that trouble, I guess my next question would be "Did you
soldier on with the troublesome chipset
because you had to (for budget or other reasons?) or you just didn't have
the time to source out a dedicated RAID card?
Mostly timescales - it was a typical 'Director-driven' project where they havered around for ages and then suddenly wanted it yesterday. All the kit was already in stock and so...