RAID1 under GRUB Configuration Help Needed

[Gilboa Davara]

On Mon, 2006-09-25 at 09:55 -0400, Steven Stromer wrote:
> Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > On Sun, 2006-09-24 at 13:54 -0400, Steven Stromer wrote:
> >> I have been closely following a great HOWTO at:
> >> http://howtos.linuxbroker.com/howtoreader.shtml?file=Linux-Promise-RAID1-HOWTO.html
> >>
> >> to install a Promise FastTrack66 hardware RAID card into my FC5 box for 
> >> RAID1. I have managed to plow through the steps up to editing lilo.conf, 
> >> but FC5 uses GRUB as the default bootloader. Would anyone be able to 
> >> walk me through the steps for editing grub.conf from the point where 
> >> this article focuses on lilo.conf?
> >>
> >> I have read the GRUB documentation, as well as the documentation on a 
> >> few other forums, but am still struggling a bit, and don't want to go 
> >> off in the wrong direction at this point (if I haven't already)!
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Steven Stromer
> >>
> > 
> > OT question: FastTrack66 is a semi-hardware RAID (read: Most of the work
> > is being handled by the CPU) and it is far from being fast//stable/etc.
> > Why not setup a fully software RAID setup instead?
> > 
> > Gilboa
> > 
> I have a bunch of identical Pentium III boxes here in mint condition. I 
> am trying to use them to the best of their humble ability, but only with 
> the hardware I have on hand; I don't want to make any financial 
> investment into them. I have a bunch of brand new FastTrack66 cards 
> sitting around. They are faster than the controllers on the 
> motherboards, as I undestand, I can attach each drive to a separate 
> channel, and the only other option is to throw the cards away. I haven't 
> had any negative experiences with these controllers, and they have only 
> glowing reviews on older web pages. Is there a history of problems that 
> I should know about? Finally, I am enjoying learning more about drives 
> and drive configuration during this process. So far, it has been very 
> educational for me. If you think it's a terrible idea to run these, I'll 
> take your advisement, but if you agree with my reasoning for using them, 
> I'd really appreciate your assistance.
> 
> Thanks,
> Steven
> 

On slower/older machines, FastTrack66 might indeed be faster.
I'd suggest you build a "hardware" array, testing, and then build a
software array and test it.

If the software array performs within 10% of the semi-hardware one, use
it instead. (You can still use the IDE connectors on the FastTrack66,
though... just don't build them into an active RAID0/1 array.)

- Gilboa