Linux/Windows + Multiboot + Raid 1

Job7Evans

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Jul 17, 2003
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This is what my Hard Drive(s) look like (partition wise):

first there is my Windows XP C partition (primary, fat32), and then there is an extended partition which include drive D, and E (both FAT32). The hard drive is 60GB, and at the end of the extended partition there is 9GB worth of unpartitioned (unallocated) free space. On top of all that said, I have a second hard drive (60GB in size) to mirror this drive setup. These drives are in Raid 1 (mirror) mode.
I want to setup a Redhat Linux 9 partition in the 9GB of free space at the end of the drive. Is this at all possible? In the end I hope to have a multiboot Raid 1 system that can boot to both Windows XP, or Red Hat Linux 9. I need to completely know everything I need to do to make this setup possible. Anyone to answer this question is a cool Tech Guru...thanks

(FYI: my raid controller is an onboard Highpoint HPT370 controller)
 

poorboy

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Jan 17, 2002
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Short answer is yes, you can do that. Mirrored disks are pretty easy to work with. The only potential problem is that that you need the boot loader to jump to 51GB, which may or may not work... I think the grub boot loader may handle that better than lilo.

Hopefully the installer will load the HighPoint driver for you, and you can choose the /dev/sda SCSI emulated RAID drive rather than messing with the IDE /dev/hde /dev/hdg drives. The main thing is to do the disk partitioning manually, and don't mess with the existing partitions.

As usual, I'd suggest not using RedHat 9. It's pretty much dead now - no more updates from RedHat. Go with the current release of Fedora or something. I can't say which is going to be the easiest with a HighPoint controller, but I found Mandrake deals nicely with installation on Promise RAID (Debian is a fricken bad joke for this, but I wanted it on the server :-().


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