Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

[bobsmith]

I'm trying to install a dual-boot setup with windows 7, but I'm having trouble with disk detection reporting correctly. I have 5 hard drives in my desktop. Each drive has 2 NTFS partitions splitting the space. Drives 0 and 4 are mirrored dynamic disks. Drives 1, 2, and 3 are striped dynamic disks. Drives 0 and 4 correctly report their partition scheme, but drives 1, 2, and 3 show only one partition in each disk using the full drive. They also report fat32 instead NTFS.

I aborted the installation to prevent any data loss, but I'd really like to give Kubuntu a shot.

Any suggestions?

[oshunluvr]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

Not sure what "dynamic" disks are. Should I assume your referring to bios based RAID - aka "Fake" RAID? If so, most Fake RAID setups are not usable by linux. You might do some web searching on the topic.

[bobsmith]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

"Should I assume your referring to bios based RAID"

No, you should not.

It's a software raid solution used by windows natively. I am using it instead of a "fake raid" precisely because linux doesn't play well with it. See http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...8WS.10%29.aspx or http://www.techimo.com/articles/index.pl?photo=149 for dated, but accurate articles.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

It figures I'd never heard of "Dynamic" disks, I stopped using windows os's on my computers 10 years ago :P

The linux kernel is supposed to have support for your devices included - it's called LDM. I've obviously never used or needed it.

I've done a little searching and found a commercial product - Paragon NTFS Driver for linux - that will access your drives correctly. It's about $40US.

IMO installing linux to ntfs formatted partitions is problematic. Any chance you have 8-10 gb (as little as 4 will do if you don't plan on a lot of programs) available for a separate partition outside your dynamic volumes?

[bobsmith]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

Oh dear, I should have been more clear about my intended setup. My Apologies.

I planned on changing 4 (of those 10) partitions (1 on each disk + 1 swap on unused disk) into XFS formatted partitions. I wanted to setup a RAID10 array (and encryption) for my Linux installation. The problem is only 2 (of the 5) disks are correctly reporting their size. The mirrored pair is reporting correctly during installation, but the striped trio does not. They are all the same models of 2.5 inch disks (Western Digital Scorpio Black) and they are all plugged into the same mobo (MSI 785GM-E65).

I am going to be setting up a home server (this is my gaming box). I don't have the funds for it yet. In the meanwhile, I wanted to test a number of Linux distributions and get a feel for them with things like ease of use, control, administration and performance. That way when the server is ready to be built I can hit the ground running.

I suppose I could run Virtualbox, but I know this will not be as fast as a native installation and make benchmarking performance inaccurate.

Here is a picture example of my drives and partition scheme

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo...eat=directlink

[oshunluvr]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

I wonder if deleting the partitions under windows leaving the space unformatted would have better results?

I would start with booting into linux and running sudo fdisk -l in a terminal to see what your partition tables look like to linux. Also try 10.04 or a different distro all together to see if you get different results.

Also some suggestions (free advice is worth what you pay for it ): If you're planning a media server as this boxes primary function I'd use Ubuntu Server 10.04 rather than Meerkat Kubuntu for several reasons.
1. 10.04 is a LTS (Long Term Support) release.
2. The server version installer has preset selectable package options making install somewhat easier - if you still want a desktop sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop does it in a jiffy
3. Many of us are having installer partitioning issues with 10.10, me included.

Also - unless you have a really small amount if RAM, you won't need much swap space for a server. I would use EXT3/4 or REISERFS as the install partition format and use XFS only for a data partition for large files.

[bobsmith]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

Well, I broke it... I might be able to salvage things, but I'm going to have to do further research. Last night (prior to your response) I tried some of my own ideas. In any event I am glad I make frequent backups and store them on external drives. In hope that others may might not make the same mistakes, I'm going to list what I've done and answer any questions regarding this failed experiment.

"I wonder if deleting the partitions under windows leaving the space unformatted would have better results?"

This had occured to me and I tried it with no change in results. I then recreated them to see if they showed up in case of some previous error. Still no changes.

"I would start with booting into linux and running sudo fdisk -l in a terminal to see what your partition tables look like to linux. Also try 10.04 or a different distro all together to see if you get different results."

I should have checked fdisk first. It probably would have stopped me dead in my tracks. Checking fdisk didn't occur to me until I read your response.

Here is what I did

Rather than try an older version of Ubuntu I tried the current Debian stable. I've used it in the past and so I had some familiarity. The Debian installer showed the same partition scheme that Kubuntu had.

I had decided that since the mirrored drives were reporting correctly, I would just install Debian to a single drive and setup a raid array on the other 4 drives at some point in the future. I got to the point where it was asking questions about installing Grub and I decided I wasn't comfortable installing it to the MBR and decided that I would redo the installation tomarrow (today) with a USB stick to use as /boot.

This morning I decided to play on internet for a bit before working on Debian straight away. That's when I discovered that Windows would boot, but then go straight to blue screen. I spent some time playing with both mirrored drives and windows repair utilties with no luck.

I decided to boot Kubuntu and run it from the cd to inspect things. Opening the file manager my data appeared intact on one of the mirrored drives. (the 2nd mirrored drive is e-sata and I had it turned off) On the trio of striped drives only the recently recreated empty NTFS partitions show up.

I found this odd since the installer showed them as single partitions previously. I decided to run the installer and see what they showed now. The installer showed them as single fat32 partitions that used the whole drive. I Installed Kubuntu to the mirrored drive that had the aborted Debian installation, figuring I couldn't break it any worse than I already had. I'm typing this report from it now.

Here is what "sudo fdisk -l" reports:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x13c14054

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12111 97280223+ 42 SFS
/dev/sda2 12112 15758 29294527+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 15759 30347 117186142+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 30348 30401 433755 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe03cb909

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 30402 244197528+ 42 SFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0b527992

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 30402 244197528+ 42 SFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9b3235da

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 30402 244197528+ 42 SFS

Summary:

I found a thread over here http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...ilesystem.html that states "SFS partition = Dynamic Disk in Windows" and "Many kernels have *some* support for Windows' dynamic disks. If your kernel has LDM support configured, you may be able to mount the partition manually" and links to another thread, but the link is 404'd.

I'm guessing that the SFS partition on sda1 got borked during install, but I'm grasping at straws. I'll be doing a bit of reasearch and I'll report back if I find anything. If anyone has suggestions, I'm open to them.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Dynamic disks not reporting correctly

I'm hoping your /dev/sda drive is one you had backed up :-X