I've looked through every thread I can find looking for a solution to my issue. None of the discussions have been able to fully solve the issue, though each has helped to make some gains here and there.

Here is my situation:
AMD XP2700+ (i686 architecture)
Ubuntu 8.04 is installed and running quite happily on internal IDE drive - and I want to keep it that way
I have a RocketRAID 1740 controller card - PCI connected to (4) 1TB Drives
The RAID BIOS sees the drives and they are configured in two RAID5 arrays, one of 2TB and one of 1TB
I want to actually see these drives and, I don't know, maybe copy a file or two onto them.


Please help! I've got too much $$$ tied up in this. If I can't make Ubuntu work I will have to fall back to Windows (more $$$).


What I know:

RocketRAID 1740 is not expressly supported on Ubuntu, but there is a source code driver available on the Highpoint website - the latest version (today being 10/11/08) is 2.1-080710
The drives are NOT initialized - online manufacturer documentation states that redundant arrays are not initialized by the BIOS, but by the software
In attempting to get the driver loaded, I have actually gotten as far as building it, installing it and loading it. What I don't know is if anything has gone awry. The best I've been able to do is get the RAID card to beep (alarm indicating array failure), but the BIOS shows all drives as OK. I believe the driver has fully loaded because I am able to disable it under Hardware Drivers - which (thank god) stops the beeping after a reboot.

Do I need to figure out how to "initialize" the disks from the OS?

Highpoint has a link to a file that unpacks as *.rpm files (those are RedHat, right?). No luck trying to install - apt-get doesn't like them.

The command I used was
Code:
sudo apt-get install hptsvr-3.13-4.i586.rpm
Please - please - there must be someone out there who has already done this and can give me some clear step by step instructions.