Current best recommendation for Athlon 64 motherboard?

[Robert L Cochran]

Bryan J. Smith wrote:

> Timothy LeBlanc wrote:
>
>> The only issue I ran into was the board has built in RAID and I wanted
>> to have a mirrored drive set. FC3 see's the drives fine but not as a
>> mirrored set as set up in the BIOS.
>
>
> That's because it is what I call "FRAID" (Fake/Free RAID).
> There is *0* hardware, it is a standard ATA controller with a trick BIOS.
> Once the OS boots, it needs a driver with all the *software* RAID logic.
> Because this logic contains all the RAID IP (typically licensed), 
> there will *never* be a GPL driver.
> If you're lucky, you can find a binary-only driver for a specific kernel.
>
> Now there is a generic GPL RAID logic called "ataraid" and various 
> FRAID interface modules (hptraid, pdcraid and silraid) but they 
> typically don't work - and I've seen people trash their boot.
> Again, the problem stems from the fact that these FRAID approaches 
> have 0 hardware - they are 100 percent software other then the 
> boot-time 16-bit Int13h disk services.
>
>>  I have looked around for drivers
>> for my Raid controller but have not found any yet. I can always use
>> the software RAID in FC3 to create my mirror set but for now I'm 
>> happy and will continue to look for a driver.
>
>
> LVM/MD in Linux will always *outperform* a FRAID driver.
> Same deal with LDM in NT5 (200x/XP).
>
> For more on LVM v. FRAID v. microcontroller v. ASIC-driven RAID, see 
> my 2004 April Sys Admin article.
> Unfortunately it is not freely available on-line, but FYI if you get 
> Sys Admin - they include a CD with all past articles if you have a 
> subscription.
> -- 
> Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
> Currently Mobile
>
I agree with Bryan....I've been there before and had the same RAID 
troubles. Solution was to change my motherboard from Asus to Gigabyte 
and use Linux software RAID. It wasn't that hard getting RAID working 
and it was fun for a while, but then I coveted the mirror drive for 
other things and said the heck with RAID and went back to a single drive 
configuration (no RAID.)

 But my big problem at that time was I foolishly invested in (very 
expensive) RDRAM, and did so just as RDRAM was going downhill with 
avalanche speed. I had been very influenced by Maximim PC magazine when 
making my buying choices. Now I'm considerably wiser.

Bob Cochran