9.10 on RAID1

[GyroTech]

Hi all,

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 9.10 on a machine with the system drive is meant to be a RAID1. The RAID is provided by the motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3, and 2 WD Raptors. The motherboard is configured to show these 2 drives as a single mirror array and make it the primary boot device.
When I fire up the Ubuntu live CD, it still sees the drives as 2 separate drives... Does this mean the motherboard is only set up as a very basic software RAID (Windows install previously had no problem seeing array as a single drive)?? I have seen in this forum issues with old RAID drives being used on their own and how to clean the RAID information off them, but that is the opposite of what I'm trying to do.

Can anyone help with this??

Many thanks,

GyroTech

[xiainx]

I had a similar problem on my RAID 1 drive. I'm pretty sure it means its a soft raid. The only way to make it work is to basically reinstall the softraid using fakeraid (i think thats what its called), then reinstalling windows, and then ubuntu. Or, you can remove the raid info from it, and use it as two drives (that's what I did). The problem is that linux doesn't recognize the software raid, while windows does.

[falconindy]

Soft raid is not the same as what the OP has here, which is lovingly known as fake raid. It's my understanding that there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

[GyroTech]

OK, so just to get things straight, I wasn't intending to go with dual-boot Windows on this system, rather just noting that Windows could read the 'RAID'ed drives as it should.

As far as solutions go, it looks like my best bet is turn turn off any of the motherboard fake-RAID stuff, and go with a fully soft-RAID set up??

[darkod]

If you plan on using the fakeraid (mobo raid) you can either use the alternate install cd or the live cd you have but few steps are needed to make it see the array properly. Read about fakeraid here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

There is a section about installing from the live cd but note that the instructions are for 9.04 and the grub install commands are for grub1, not grub2.

If you don't plan to share the raid with windows, software raid is much better it seems. Disable the raid in BIOS and again use the alternate cd to set up software raid. More info here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=408461

and also here:
http://forums.techarena.in/guides-tutorials/1204944.htm