Help - Highpoint Hotrod 100 Pro Raid and Redhat 7.3

[andrew at bishop.dropbear.id.au]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Dave wrote:

[...]
> My first problem is my hardware raid.  I have a ABIT KT7A motherboard
> with a build in Highpoint Hot Rod 100 Pro, (or more precisely HPT370)
> Raid controller.
>
> When I run the redhat 7.3 installation it happily ignores my raid 0
> array of two disks and reports on my two disks separately for
> partioning etc.

I have a slightly older motherboard, with the hpt366 chip on it (same
drivers, it's the ATA66 version).  I played with it a bit, a while ago,
and discovered a few things:

1) There is no hardware raid support for that chip under linux.  However,
read on....

2) That chip works just fine under linux as a normal ide controller.

3) linux's standard software raid 0 is laid out slightly differently on
the disks, so if you already have the raid set up with data on it, that
won't work.  If you don't that's the easiest way to go.

4) There *is* a different kernel module that gives you compatability.  I
forget the name of it atm, but if you compile yourself a
2.4.anythingrecent kernel, the option will be in there.  It does the
raiding in software, but it's fully compatable with the hardware raid you
have set up.  No flashing of the controller necessary.

If there's a driver that requires you to flash the chip, then maybe
there's hardware support available now.  That would be cool - although not
noticably faster than the software version, still cool.  However, I know
nothing about it.


Deadrat 7.3 will be looking for a "normal" software raid 0 (the
compatability module isn't standard, and probably isn't in the deadrat
kernel).  If you can afford to blow the raid away and recreate it, the
easiest thing to do would be to do that, and use normal software raid 0.
However, if you want to dual boot occasionally and still read it, or if
you can't afford to lose the raid when installing, then just install
without doing anything with those drives, then have a play with compiling
your own kernel with the appropriate modules.

If you have more questions, I can have a poke through my old config files
and see what I can find for you.

Andrew