Hardware Linux Raid Controller (Fakeraid)

Having searched the whole internet and finding information that were scattered i have decided to write a howto how to setup a hardware raid controller on linux. The most threads that i have read say that when a motherboard implies that it has a raid controller it doesn't and it just uses bios software to controll the raid (Software raid controller). Most users say that the best think to use is the software raid controller (mdadm) and i mostly agree with that.

But if for some reason you need to use the hardware raid controller then follow these steps

So things are really simple,first read your motherboards manual. In my motherboard (Asus) i configured the bridge to use mirroring raid,also told it which drives to use (raid1 and raid3).

Checked the boot sequence (1 boot hard disk you put the array raid)

So after i rebooted, my bios prompted me for f10 to create the array raid.There you just choose which drives you want to combine and what mode you want to use (mirroring and sata1+sata3).

From the bios+hardware point of view you are ready.

After that i downloaded the debian lenny cd and before pressing the install i pressed e added dmraid=true to the parameters.

When prompted to format the hard disk i saw this in the position of the two hard disks ar01_nvidia_raid. You format accordingly to your needs.

Continue accordingly with your debian installation and install the grub to the mbr of your raid hard disks.

Voilla hardware raid controller accomplished. If you need to use remember to use the software raid controller (mdadm) and not the fake bios hardware raid controller.

Good Luck.