israel.garcia@cimex.com.cu wrote:

I want to install CentOS 4.0 on my new server (two SATA hdds, Intel 865 mainboard), now, I want to configure a RAID 1 using this hardware..., my question is:

1. Setting up a RAID 1 on SATA hdds is different from a normal hdds

(PATA)? 2. Is there some SATA RAID Linux Howto available?

I believe Intel 865 uses ICH5? If so, it is a sofware RAID emulation in BIOS. You do not have RAID in hardware. It's just a marketing trick that has nothing to do with reality. Special device drivers would be needed to use it (and you'd end up with sofware RAID using them anyhow). Just disable RAID support in BIOS, and configure standard Linux software RAID (/dev/md* devices) as you would do with any other normal/standard IDE/SCSI/SATA setup.

If you really insist to pretend that you have RAID in hardware (and since you don't have it, you can only pretend), there's some support in device mapper for it. Not still ready for prime time, but works in some cases. Basically, there's an utility that reads out this fake RAID information from BIOS, and configures device mapper to handle it properly (which is exactly the same thing "RAID" device driver for Windows you got with the motherboard is doing).

For more info, check:

http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html