[PLUG] IDE expansion cards for linux software RAID?

[Adrian Woodley]

Ari Finander wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> My GA-7VRXP rev-2 motherboard recently died and I need to find an alternative for my 4 IDE disk (2x80GB RAID1 + 2x120GB RADI1) RAID array that was running using the Promise controller on the motherboard (separate boot drive for /).
> 
> I'm running Fedora Core 3 (soon Fedora Core 4) and I plan on using two expansion cards (one drive per IDE channel on the cards is safer, that way if a drive fails it won't cause a problem with the data like it can in a master/slave configuration). 
> 
> My problem is that I don't know which cards to buy. I've seen a bunch of cheap Silicon Image 0680 and ITE 8212/8212F based cards, but when researching these it seems that a lot of people have problems using these with linux.

I fought with a Silicon Image PCI0680 Ultra ATA-133 for a good 12 hours, 
including BIOS updates to the motherboard and the controller. I ended up 
solving the problem by moving the card to another pci slot. Since then 
its been going fine. It runs two of the disks in a 3+1 RAID5 array.

> Can anyone here point me in the right direction or offer a recommendation?
> 
> I can't really afford the 3Ware 7006-2 hardware RAID card, and even if I were to go that route I'd still have to use a master/slave setup as the card only has 2 IDE channels. I might be able to use both hardware and software RAID, with the 3Ware card using the 2x120GB drives in RAID1 and linux software raid having the 2x80GB drives in RAID1...but then where does my 40GB / drive go? I wonder if I could put an 80GB and a 120GB on each IDE channel on the 3Ware card and have it mirror master-master and slave-slave?
> 
> Anyway, I could really use your help. Backing up 200GB of disks to DVD is not something I look forward to doing :-(
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Ari
> 
> 

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