FC3 x86_64 install on sil3114 SATA controller problems.

[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Tuesday 19 April 2005 01:20pm, Koustubha Kale wrote:
> Dear Lamanot,
> Did you select Raid in the bios?
> Did you update the bios? Which exact drives are you
> using?
> Please elaborate on your hardware setup so I may get
> pointers.

Quoting myself:

> --- "Lamont R. Peterson" <lamont at gurulabs.com> wrote:
[SNIP]
> > See my other reply to this thread.  I have that
[SNIP]

I described my hardware there.  To summarize:

2x Opteron 242 processors
Tyan K8W motherboard
1 GB RAM
1x 160GB SATA Western Digital hard drive

As to the RAID support in the BIOS; here is the dirty little secret of most 
(not all) on board RAID support provided by motherboards (whether they are 
providing ATA, SCSI or SATA RAID):  there is nothing in the hardware that 
performs any RAID operations.  The "driver" actually implements RAID in 
software, in the driver.

For those rare motherboards whose RAID support really in in the hardware, the 
performance could never equal (let alone surpass) that of Linux software 
RAID.  I know, this statement could start the flame war on this list, please, 
do not do that.  If anyone out there does not understand how this is, please, 
send a reasonably phrased email to the list in reply to this message 
(changing the subject, of course) and I will be happy to write up the 
answers.

The long and the short of the BIOS RAID support on the motherboard in 
question, if you want to do RAID with Linux on that board, just use Linux 
software RAID and you will not need any third party drivers.  You will also 
be able to much more easily administer your RAID setup and it will perform 
better.

And no, with only 1 hard drive I am, of course, not using any RAID on that 
home workstation.
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com>
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. http://www.GuruLabs.com/
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