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Linux ATA RAID HOWTO

Murty Rompalli

           murty@solar.m u r t y.n e t
        

April 26, 2002

Revision History
Revision 2.0 2002-05-10 Revised by: mr
Major enhancements
Revision 1.3 2002-05-07 Revised by: jyg
format fixes
Revision 1.2 2002-04-30 Revised by: mr
Minor fixes
Revision 1.1 2002-04-28 Revised by: ldl
Some minor changes and sgml-improvements
Revision 1.0 2002-04-26 Revised by: mr
Initial Release

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 7.2 with Promise FastTrack ATA RAID Controller only.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Copyright Information
1.2. Disclaimer
1.3. New Versions
1.4. Credits
1.5. Feedback
1.6. Translations
2. Requirements
3. Prepare Promise Driver Floppy
4. Preparing RedHat 7.2 CDs
5. Installing Red Hat 7.2
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 FastTrack
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
A. How is this document generated
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    Introduction