[Pc_Support] WinXP 64-Bit Software Raid Setup Howto? -- nForce 4/4x0 FRAID-1 works fine ...

[Bryan J. Smith]

carter at carter.cc wrote:
> You're quite correct... no mirroring/striping with XP or 2K Pro. 
> 2000 Server, 2003 Server are the only recent OS's that support it.
> So if you don't have it available on-board (FRAID) or via a real
> hardware controller, you're SOL in Windows Land.

Actually, this weekend I just went FRAID-1 on my wife's computer and
I'm considering it for mine as well.  I'm using nForce 4 and 410/430
series mainboards with Fedora Core 5 and Windows XP Home as well as
Pro.

I converted her from an older ViA KM266 (Athlon XP2600+) to a nVidia
GeForce6100/nForce410 (Athlon64 3200+).  It took a number of
intermedia steps to get the Windows XP Home dual-boot working, but it
was flawless for Fedora Core 5 -- including copying the original
Windows XP Home install from a 3Ware 6200 RAID-1 volume to SATA
drives on the nVidia FRAID-1 volume.

Fedora Core 5's devicemapper automagically creates the
/dev/mapper/nvidia* entries and then symlinks them to /dev/dm-0 (full
disk), /dev/dm-1 (first partition), /dev/dm-2, etc...  Again, these
worked flawlessly for even copying the Windows partitions (including
a raw "dd" of the 32MB C:/boot/system drive).

GRUB and Linux boot fine from the FRAID-1 volume, and even prevent me
from accidentally writing to the "regular" /dev/sda and /dev/sdb
device when the BIOS has been set to [F]RAID.

I'm quite impressed, at least with nVidia chipsets and the Fedora
Core 5 installer/kernel/utilities (including GRUB support).


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   Professional, Technical Annoyance
b.j.smith at ieee.org    http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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