RAID and dual booting

[luggw1]

I've got a machine that has a 3ware 8006-2LP RAID card in it. I am preparing to install 64-bit 10.04 over my 9.04 partition, but before I do that, I need to get my somewhat troublesome Windoze installation working. I'm trying to install Windows 7 and have had some trouble finding signed drivers for the RAID card. Now, I don't really care if I can see the partitions on the RAID drives from Windows as All I use that part of it for is gaming.

If I was to plug another HDD into a SATA port on the mobo and install windows on it and then go ahead with the 10.04 installation on the RAID partition, would GRUB be able to figure out what's going on and boot both OSes correctly?

I know this is kind of weird, but Windows is about to make me pull my hair out. Why can't it be like Kubuntu and just work?

Thanks
Bill Lugg

[oshunluvr]

Re: RAID and dual booting

IMO hardware RAID is less reliable and more difficult to setup in linux than software RAID - i.e. drivers and such. Additionally, if you have hardware RAID and your RAID card fails - you may not be able to recover anything unless you get the same (or at least totally compatible) card as a replacement. With software RAID - it's not hardware dependant so any computer that runs linux can access the RAID devices.

If you're not going to use RAID for windows, I can't see any reason to use the card at all.

Setting up RAID with mdadm is quick, easy, and rather painless. Let me know if you want to go that direction and I'll step you through it.

BTW: I use RAID0, RAID0+1, and RAID5 this way with great success.