[lug] SW Raid question

[dio2002 at indra.com]

> On Mon, 2007-07-23 at 23:48 -0600, dio2002 at indra.com wrote:
>> I just purchased a new SuperMicro system with an onboard 4 port SATA
>> ICHR7
>> adaptec controller.  SM does have source code for this controller but it
>> is fakeraid.
>>
>> I bought the system with the intent of disabling the raid support on the
>> controller so that i could run mdadm SW raid on it.  However, now that i
>> have the system, i've found out that disabling the raid support on the
>> bios puts that sata controller in "compatibility" mode, which means that
>> it drops to ATA 100 speed.  wtf!  shouldn't this be able to operate in
>> some kind of "std" SATA mode?  that's a pretty big drop down in
>> performance.
>
> What happens if you put the card into RAID mode, but do not define an
> array and let Linux load its regular SATA driver?
>
> Most cards I know of will present the drives not in an array as separate
> drives.

i'm going to call supermicro and double confirm this with them.. i've been
told once that you have to drop to compatability mode if i want to be able
to install sw raid on top of it.  yet, i've talked to 2 different people
over there and gotten different levels of support so maybe i can get some
more explanation about this.  also, i've found the mobo manual supplied
with this system less than clear and even inaccurate in a number of
places.