Anybody a guru at motherboard-based RAID?

[KCmetro]

My motherboard allows for enabling RAID mode, and I'm going to use a couple disks with RAID 1, so I went ahead and set that up. Do I still have to use mdadm in Linux? I thought that is used when they are still recognized as two separate disks. Now that the drives are set up with RAID 1 via motherboard, how do I finish the process in Linux?

 

This is what I'm using:
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/KCmetro/saved/R3wcf7

[gamerking]

6 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

My motherboard allows for enabling RAID mode, and I'm going to use a couple disks with RAID 1, so I went ahead and set that up. Do I still have to use mdadm in Linux? I thought that is used when they are still recognized as two separate disks. Now that the drives are set up with RAID 1 via motherboard, how do I finish the process in Linux?

 

This is what I'm using:
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/KCmetro/saved/R3wcf7

use software raid in linux

[SCHISCHKA]

4 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

Do I still have to use mdadm in Linux?

NO

mdadm is software raid. software raid is better because you can transfer your disks to other systems without problems. if you continue down the path you have chosen (hardware raid) you should be able to treat the drive as a normal single disk drive.

[ShadySocks]

This is a worst(commmon)-case scenario thread: 

 

 

 

 

 

[KCmetro]

2 minutes ago, ShadySocks said:

This is a worst(commmon)-case scenario thread: 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, I was able to get RAID working on the motherboard and for the systems to recognize it, I'm curious what the step is for actually setting it up in Linux. I set it up in Windows fine, but I think I'll have to set it up in Linux first, so Windows will only be able to take the other half.

[zMeul]

if you'll use the mobo's RAID capability (ICH) do your best and don't update the BIOS

I've seen numerous cases where BIOS updates just fucked up the RAID array, and curiously enough ... ASUS boards

 

I've used RAID 0 array on a very old GigaByte board (GA-X38-DS5), went through quite a few BIOS updates and moved the said array on other mobo - it still worked

one thing I also noticed, Linux is not friendly with ICH RAID arrays, it destroys them

[KCmetro]

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

if you'll use the mobo's RAID capability (ICH) do your best and don't update the BIOS

I've seen numerous cases where BIOS updates just fucked up the RAID array, and curiously enough ... ASUS boards

 

I've used RAID 0 array on a very old GigaByte board (GA-X38-DS5), went through quite a few BIOS updates and moved the said array on other mobo - it still worked

one thing I also noticed, Linux is not friendly with ICH RAID arrays, it destroys them

Good to know. I don't think I've ever updated a BIOS. How would the RAID be set up in linux after setting it up on the motherboard?

[zMeul]

18 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

Good to know. I don't think I've ever updated a BIOS. How would the RAID be set up in linux after setting it up on the motherboard?

the Linux distro just has to have driver support for your controller, ICH10R RST in your case - last time I checked, it was still unsupported https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_microsoft_signature_pc_program_now/d7vp4zb/

 

your option would be to use mdraid, but I have no experience with this

[Electronics Wizardy]

49 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

Good to know. I don't think I've ever updated a BIOS. How would the RAID be set up in linux after setting it up on the motherboard?

Should just show up as a single drive.

[KCmetro]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Should just show up as a single drive.

lsblk shows 2 drives but notices that they are raid... not really sure what to do with that.

46 minutes ago, zMeul said:

the Linux distro just has to have driver support for your controller, ICH10R RST in your case - last time I checked, it was still unsupported https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/53ri0m/warning_microsoft_signature_pc_program_now/d7vp4zb/

 

your option would be to use mdraid, but I have no experience with this

It looks like mdadm is already active on the system, ps ef grep shows /sbin/mdadm --monitor --scan

 

I did a google of:

"linux" "intel" "raid"

and found this:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/rst-linux-paper.pdf

...haven't read it yet, just took a quick glance, and it looks like it might have the answer.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, KCmetro said:

lsblk shows 2 drives but notices that they are raid... not really sure what to do with that.

Pics? 

 

Try using one of them. Often mobo raid isn't raid like on a raid card where it shows one device and has a cpu to process it, the mobo still shows 2 devices with a instruction to put them in raid to the os.

[zMeul]

2 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

and found this:

http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/white-papers/rst-linux-paper.pdf

...haven't read it yet, just took a quick glance, and it looks like it might have the answer.

it only mentions RedHat and SUSe

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, zMeul said:

it only mentions RedHat and SUSe

its normally he same on all distros

[KCmetro]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Pics? 

 

Try using one of them. Often mobo raid isn't raid like on a raid card where it shows one device and has a cpu to process it, the mobo still shows 2 devices with a instruction to put them in raid to the os.

sdb 2.7T disk

* md126 2.7T raid1 (part of the sdb hdd)

sdc 2.7T disk

* md126 2.7T raid1 (part of the sdc hdd)

sda (linux ssd)

nvme0n1 (windows ssd)

3 minutes ago, zMeul said:

it only mentions RedHat and SUSe

Perhaps it'd still work on debian-based. (?)

[KCmetro]

Okay, well I'm tired, accidentally clicking on things. lol I'll revisit this tomorrow... maybe that PDF has the solution.

[zMeul]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

its normally he same on all distros

might, might not ...

 

from what I could find, it's possible it also requires some proprietary Intel shit that's not publicly available - this is why only two enterprise grade distros are listed, Debian not being part

it might explain why I had issues with my RAID0 setup back in the day - up to one kernel everything was fine, then all hell broke lose; about same time Intel switched from Intel Matrix Storage to Intel Rapid Storage Technology

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

sdb 2.7T disk

* md126 2.7T raid1 (part of the sdb hdd)

sdc 2.7T disk

* md126 2.7T raid1 (part of the sdc hdd)

sda (linux ssd)

nvme0n1 (windows ssd)

Perhaps it'd still work on debian-based. (?)

its showing the raid just fine.  its the md146 device

 

try using the /dev/md146 device and see how it goes

[KuJoe]

Avoid motherboard RAID (FakeRAID) at all costs. If you have the option to use software RAID over motherboard RAID then DO IT! Trust me, it's not worth the hassle dealing with motherboard RAID if things mess up. There are no benefits to using motherboard RAID over software RAID and the only time to ever use it is if software and hardware RAID are not available (rare cases with OSes these days). If your motherboard dies there is a good chance you've lost your RAID even if you replace your motherboard with the same exact model, FakeRAID just hates any changes to hardware whereas software RAID will let you recover from any failed component without any problem. Monitoring your hard drives with motherboard RAID can be a pain also, software RAID makes it really easy to monitor and change settings if needed without having to reboot and login to the BIOS.

[KCmetro]

8 hours ago, zMeul said:

might, might not ...

 

from what I could find, it's possible it also requires some proprietary Intel shit that's not publicly available - this is why only two enterprise grade distros are listed, Debian not being part

it might explain why I had issues with my RAID0 setup back in the day - up to one kernel everything was fine, then all hell broke lose; about same time Intel switched from Intel Matrix Storage to Intel Rapid Storage Technology

It looks like that Intel PDF jumps right into setting raid in bios then configuring raid with mdadm, aka motherboard raid and software raid. It also mentions checking mobo-level status of the raid by using mdadm with the -–detail-platform option.

 

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

its showing the raid just fine.  its the md146 device

 

try using the /dev/md146 device and see how it goes

It looks like I use the /dev/md126 along with mdadm, or do you mean jumping right in with the next step of filesystem creation? I'm also going to use LVM.

 

8 hours ago, KuJoe said:

Avoid motherboard RAID (FakeRAID) at all costs. If you have the option to use software RAID over motherboard RAID then DO IT! Trust me, it's not worth the hassle dealing with motherboard RAID if things mess up. There are no benefits to using motherboard RAID over software RAID and the only time to ever use it is if software and hardware RAID are not available (rare cases with OSes these days). If your motherboard dies there is a good chance you've lost your RAID even if you replace your motherboard with the same exact model, FakeRAID just hates any changes to hardware whereas software RAID will let you recover from any failed component without any problem. Monitoring your hard drives with motherboard RAID can be a pain also, software RAID makes it really easy to monitor and change settings if needed without having to reboot and login to the BIOS.

You seem to take personal offense to the notion of anybody even considering using motherboard raid. Bad experience with it?

[KuJoe]

26 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

It looks like that Intel PDF jumps right into setting raid in bios then configuring raid with mdadm, aka motherboard raid and software raid. It also mentions checking mobo-level status of the raid by using mdadm with the -–detail-platform option.

 

It looks like I use the /dev/md126 along with mdadm, or do you mean jumping right in with the next step of filesystem creation? I'm also going to use LVM.

 

You seem to take personal offense to the notion of anybody even considering using motherboard raid. Bad experience with it?

I don't take offense, I'm just trying to save you a lot of time and headache. In addition to having a horrible experience with it dozens of times (all different motherboards and controllers), I've tried to help too many people who have lost all of their data thanks to FakeRAID. I even gave it another try last year and ended up losing all of the data on both drive thanks to a bad SATA cable (luckily it was just the OS so nothing important was lost, but the time spent re-installing the OS could have been spent writing scripts that make me money).

 

Feel free to search around, I've never once seen anybody ever suggest using FakeRAID over software or hardware RAID except if the OS does not support software RAID and the person didn't want to spent the $50 on a hardware RAID card. I used to think, it must have better performance but unfortunately it uses the same CPU as software RAID does so no benefits there. Maybe it has better features? Nope, it doesn't even support TRIM for SSDs like mdadm does and you can't do any fine tuning like you can with hardware and software RAID. Surely there's a good reason why motherboard providers offer it then right? It looks good from a marketing perspective I guess.

 

If you still want to use FakeRAID then be sure to keep good backups of your data (you should do this anyways but especially if you're going to use FakeRAID).

 

I found this nice link outlining the different types of RAID here: http://skrypuch.com/raid/

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 hours ago, KCmetro said:

t looks like I use the /dev/md126 along with mdadm, or do you mean jumping right in with the next step of filesystem creation? I'm also going to use LVM.

use the md146 device, its the raid partition.

[KCmetro]

25 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

use the md146 device, its the raid partition.

md126?

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, KCmetro said:

md126?

yep, try making the partition table on there.

[KCmetro]

8 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yep, try making the partition table on there.

...one of these days I'll get around to it. It took time planning the build. The build itself was fairly quick. Now there's a shiny new computer just sitting there not being used. Real life, etc. Eventually I'll get around to setting it up.

[KCmetro]

Success on both systems... but lost 700GB, wondering if I can get that back.

 

blkid =

/dev/md126: PTUUID="b6735f(etc)" PTTYPE="dos"

 

fdisk -l /dev/md126 =

disk /dev/md126: 2.7TB

units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

sector size (logical/physical) = 512 bytes / 4096 bytes

i/o size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

disklabel type: dos

/dev/md126p1 size 1T ID 8e LVM

/dev/md126p2 size 1024G ID 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

 

filesystems on each

p1 = ext4

p2 = ntfs

 

I couldn't find an option in fdisk to change the main disklabel type from "dos" to something else, that is assuming that might be why I'm missing 700GB.

 

I loaded windows to see what it saw and it showed the linux partition (inaccessible of course), I did a quick format so it could use its own partiiton and then it also showed the ~700GB as unallocated (and unusable).