Partitioning/Dual-booting a RAID array

edvallie

Well a few days ago I finally got around and found the nvraid drivers off the DFI website, threw them on a floppy, installed a floppy drive, and setup my machiene to run RAID 0.

Now a couple days later I decide I want to try out Fedora Core 6, so I'm kind of Iffy to see if it will work. I download partitionmagic and resize the C: drive to leave 60gb open. During the fedora setup i take 30 of that 60 and install the filesystem. Everything in the installer runs fine, then it tells me to remove the media and reboot. Everything still going okay at this point. Then I reboot and try to load fedora but just get errors while trying to process the boot files for the OS. I'm thinking it wrote onto 2 harddrives and was trying to read off of one? Or vice-versa?

Does anyone know if it is possible to keep the RAID array and still be able to dual boot? If not, am I able to somehow use a single disk to run Fedora, while preserving the RAID array for my windows partition. Maybe there are some kind of linux drivers i need to throw onto a floppy, like with windows, to get this working?

The final product will hopefully be 25gb Ubuntu/1gb swap 25gb fedora/1gb swap and the rest kept in windows.

Any help is appreciated. Wave

acruxksa · Posted: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 05:18:17 Post Subject:

It would definitely be possible to boot FC 6 from a cd or floppy and then have it load your setup on the raid array, but to boot from the raid array may be a little more difficult. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I personally have never done it. Usually I put the linux boot partition on a single drive and then the root partition on a raid array.

My advice would be to use either a floppy or cdrom to boot your linux nvraid system. It would be the easiest solution although it may be a little inconvenient. Chances are you can boot your linux installation from the FC6 installation disk.

I know this isn't the answer you were looking for, but I believe NVRAID is actually a partial if not total software solution so lack of proper driver support in linux is likely more nvidia's fault than anyone else's.

It may be possible, but I don't know how. I'm no expert though, so someone else may have a better solution.

edvallie · Posted: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 13:49:02 Post Subject:

I tried booting off the installation cd without much luck. There's a recovery console on the cd that I tried that didn't really do much either. It fails loading the files as soon as it starts booting the kernal. Maybe I should just ditch the RAID array or invest in another harddrive Mad

edvallie · Posted: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:33:24 Post Subject:

No dice figuring it out thusfar, i'll probably be whiping my RAID array tonight Sad

BeerCheeze · Posted: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 10:41:52 Post Subject:

Could you boot to say a USB drive and then select the OS you want from there?*

*Note I have never done something like this, so I'm just "thinking out side the box"

edvallie · Posted: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:08:48 Post Subject:

Blue|Fusion · Posted: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:42:37 Post Subject:

GRUB can only read from a single disk and not a [software/BIOS] RAID array. To overcome this, you'll need to use a mix of non-RAID and RAID partitions. /boot will have to be on the first disk, along with GRUB installed on the MBR. Whatever sector you left off on on the first, make the first and second equal to the end (assuming they're the same). Re-install Fedora using those partitions and you should be good to go.

edvallie · Posted: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 12:58:20 Post Subject: