Paul-
Thanks for the response. I don't have experience with the Sil controller chip.
The VIA chips have absolutely no hardware raid functionality.
The VIA chips can be configured to combine individual disks into an array with striping and/or mirroring or to not combine the disks at all. They have no intelligence and so don't cope effectively or efficiently.
As soon as you boot an operating system (windows or linux) that then talks to the hardware directly, so the bios setting
> has no effect.
I think Windows does use the BIOS configuration definitions and interrupt handlers while Linux does not.
Install/setup the prober linux drivers (dmraid et al) and you will be able to access your "bios raid" partitions.
If dmraid uses the chip then I am wrong. I think the dmraid might bypass the RAID mode and access their raid data directly as individual disks similar to your md raid. That isn't necessarily bad just duplicating the chip. The dmraid does seem to be able to read and write to the raid in some way, I don't know exactly if that is just software.
DOS doesn't count as an operating system here, it's just an overgrown bootloader.
Very funny. I have a DOS first partition on all of my disks and all I use those for is bootloading. My favorite DOS program is called 'loadlin linux' and is only 1.7Mb while the support files run up to a couple of gigs.
DOS does not talk to the hardware, it only talks to the
> bios. That's also why you don't need any drivers.
So the RAID chips do work under DOS because the BIOS is programmed that way by the designers. Linux doesn't use that programming and so now the chips don't work under Linux. That is why this is really a driver question not a hardware question.
This is my final answer:
1. The Promise controller chip on the AMD64 motherboards at least, and maybe all RAID capable chips, does work with BIOS RAID mode turned on or turned off. The chip works. I have tested this and RAID works without any software support.
2. Linux does not support the chips with RAID mode turned on for my motherboard. During my testing, I did find errors in the disks after writing to the disks with Linux when the RAID mode was enabled in the BIOS. That is why I have said not to enable the RAID mode in the BIOS. The kernel modules operate the controllers fine with chipset RAID mode turned off. That is good enough for me.
3. The software programs turning the individual disk drives into a RAID array are the only choice for Linux and a better choice than the chips at this time if there was a choice. The chips work independently, just slowly without coping.
I admit the RAID chips are cheap garbage. However, I have tested the Promise RAID mode and that does indeed function independently as a RAID controller. I think the VIA also does actually function as a RAID controller without software of any kind. They are just not supported in RAID mode by the Linux kernel. Even if they were, they would still be garbage. They are just not totally non-functional as RAID.
I have used the md raid before and recommend that software.
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