Can't Boot from SATA RAID

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SaladDidger

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Nov 11, 2013
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After the IDE HDD failed on my PC I've replaced it with two 2TB drives. I've set these up under Ubuntu as a software RAID1 after booting from an installation CD. Subsequent to the installation I remove the CD to boot from the HDD and I get a "DISK BOOT FAILURE....".

I've also tried using the drives as a hardware RAID1 array and get the same problem.

The installation seems to recognise the discs as 2TB drives and allows me to format them as a RAID1 so I'm assuming that it's not an issue with the SATA controller on the mobo. Is there a setting in the BIOS setup that I need to change? Could it be something else?

Any help gratefully accepted as it's driving me up the wall.

Cheers - SD
 
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Szyrs

Szyrs

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Aug 28, 2013
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I've not used software RAID personally but it seems logical that the software would need an operating environment to run. In this case, your Ubuntu live cd. Once that is gone, so is your RAID information.

What you want is hardware RAID, which you would configure in BIOS, as long as your motherboard (or connected RAID device) supports it...
 
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SaladDidger

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Nov 11, 2013
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SaladDidger

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I've tried the HW RAID too and get the same result. That's what makes me think it' may be a BIOS setting.

When you setup a SW RAID the installation puts all of the SW necessary to run it onto the RAID and once it boots should bring up the RAID. I'm assuming that the boot sector should be associated with the physical disc rather that the logical one and it's this that it cannot access at boot time.
 
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SaladDidger

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Thanks for your help but I have been playing with the BIOS and I've found the problem.

I had to disable the Serial-ATA RAID config in the BIOS (under Integrated Peripherals). It now boots up. I assume that it was a conflict between the HW and the SW RAID and turning off the HW RAID let the SW RAID do its stuff.
 
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Szyrs

Szyrs

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Putting the SATA Ports into RAID mode in BIOS is not the same thing as setting up RAID in BIOS. You must also select the connected HDDs and build a RAID array before you have completed the task. SATA mode is simply that, it changes the driver that you use for controlling your SATA Ports.

If you are interested in Hardware RAID, post the details of your motherboard for more information. Glad you managed something anyway...
 
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SaladDidger

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The problem was a conflict between hardware RAID and the software RAID that I was setting up.

The RAID is set up with a swap partition and an ext4 partition on both of the physical discs giving me a logical disc with one of each mirrored across the two physical drives. It seems to work OK but my first impressions is that it seems a little slow but that may be just me.
 
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Szyrs

Szyrs

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RAID1 is slower than standard use. I cannot detail the benefits of hardware RAID vs software RAID but as I understand it, software RAID is a bit more troublesome. I use hardware RAID1, although just from the motherboard. This gives both drives the same unique identifier, so that the computer treats them as one single drive - resulting in a mirror. There are no special partitions required. I have used a cheap PCIe card to run RAID1 but the result was less satisfactory and I went back to motherboard RAID. For some unknown reason, it seemed to mirror the drives in the down time, so that when I turned my PC off and on again, one drive would be full and the other would have data missing - the best (not) bit was that the RAID card couldn't seem to decide on a primary drive, so I ended up losing GB's of data and throwing the card in the bin.

Due to the slow speed of RAID1, many people opt for RAID10 (actually RAID1+0 or RAID0+1) in order to get the benefits of both worlds (RAID0 being much faster but highly risky in terms of drive failure). I personally avoid anything to do with RAID0, although it is purportedly low risk and high value with 2xSSD.

I wouldn't recommend using RAID1 for an OS drive, due to the constant read/write demands of running the OS. I use a single disk to run OS and RAID1 my data drives. Remember that any faults with one drive will be copied to the next. I am currently in discussion with another user who has just suffered this exact problem (in RAID10). One drive in his mirror set came up with some bad clusters and they were copied to his mirror - giving a faulty reading for both drives! ...but then how do you repair such a dilemma? The answer seems to be split the entire array (4 disks for RAID 10), salvage what data you can, remove the genuinely faulty disk and reformat the rest - RAID setups do offer some redundancy but no system is safe from data loss.
 
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