(Multi)Boot from hw Raid volume possible?

A

atomic

This system has two 1GB (Samsung F3) HDD setup in ICH10R RAID-0.

The RAID-0 has two volumes:

- volume 1 has 524GB with 64k stripe (small files) - ar0
- volume 2 has the remaining space with 128k stripe (large multimedia files) - ar1

Volume 1 has three primary partitions: WinSystem NTFS, Win7 NTFS and other NTFS. - ar0s{1,2,3}
Volume 2 has one primary partition: 1GB NTFS - ar1s1

FreeBSD was installed in the remaining free space, creating second slice (primary partition) - ar1s2

Install run fine, except error messages:

- In dmesg: GEOM warning, something like «ar{0,1} track out of bounds»
- During sysinstall: fdisk «chunk 'ar1s2' [(...)] does not start on a track boundary»

Install option for boot code was none. Sysinstall should have it installed in slice ar1s2, marked active.

Setting volume 2 the first boot device in bios, boots ar1s2 - as expected - but the screen reads:

Code: 
BTX Loader 1.0
(...)
FreeBSD/x86 bootstrap loader, Rev 1.1
(...)

can't load 'kernel'

Type '?' for a list of commands

OK _

Is there anything I can do to make it boot?

Please let me know how to fix it ( hardware RAID-0 and volumes should be kept as it is)




::atomic
 
I went to read the FreeBSD man pages on-line instead - and figured it out.

ICH10R is a sort of pseudo-RAID that requires a driver interface in the host OS. The controller is basically firmware and manages the sata disk devices through the driver.

Long story short, for Windows 7 (Pro or higher) use built in software raid instead of the controller. Performance wise, there is little difference. Both use CPU (I didn't know that) and with the controller it is more difficult to recover from system anomaly (you are bound to the controller whereas with the OS RAID you can just take the disks to other system).

So, after disabling the "hardware" RAID, install FreeBSD normally - with its RAID support builtin - and also see it beat Windows at that (Windows can't boot from OS software RAID-0 - that's why there is ICHxR).


Now I can proceed to the e-mail. Thanks for the notice.


::atomic
 
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