HP Embedded SATA controller FreeBSD

O

Oline61

Gawd
Joined
Aug 8, 2005
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I have an HP Proliant ML110 G3 server that I am trying to install FreeBSD on. The server has two 160GB SATA hard drives. I have used the RAID BIOS to configure a RAID 0 array with the two drives and made it bootable. When I get to the disk configuration screen of FreeBSD I am presented with the option of creating partitions on the two drives individually, but the array is nowhere to be seen. What do I need to do to get it to appear so I can install onto the array.

I believe the controller is an ICH7R, but the branding in the RAID BIOS is "HP Embedded SATA Controller". The motherboards BIOS shows the RAID array in the hard drive boot menu.
 
If this is a recent FreeBSD (6.4, 7.0, 7.1 soon) and your trying to install on a "winraid" software raid controller, the virtual disk created by the raid controller's bios should show up as disk ar0.

When the system boots, it should show what it detects. What does FreeBSD detect the RAID device, or ATA/SATA device as?
 
Thanks for the reply,
I'm using FreeBSD 7.0
It detects:
acd0 (the cdrom I'm installing from)
ad4
ad6 (these are the two hard drives in the array)

FreeBSD does not detect any ar* devices. The motherboard BIOS and RAID BIOS tell me the array is there, but FreeBSD does not detect it.
 
FreeBSD may not be able to read the metadata written by this raid contoller's bios. What does FreeBSD detect the ATA/SATA controller as?
 
It may be that the BIOS is configured for AHCI mode. If you want the disks to show up as a RAID device, the BIOS needs to be configured for "RAID" mode on the SATA controller.
 
The BIOS allows you to set the SATA connectors to "compatible" or "enhanced" mode. If you choose "enhanced" you can also choose between "RAID" and "IDE". I have it set to enhanced and RAID.

Anyway, to circumvent the problem I have added a 60GB IDE drive as my system drive and have the two 160GB drives configured as a software RAID0 array using GEOM. This is only a temporary solution because there is nowhere to mount the 60GB drive. I have a spare 5.25 bay and I might consider getting an adapter to fit the drive into that bay.
 
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