# [SOLVED] NVidia RAID 0 + dmraid + ntfs(-3g) problem

## tigrysek

Hi there!

Recently i bought two SATA drives and decided to try to use onboard (BIOS) nVidia RAID. Everything works just fine under Window$ and fine on gentoo until i try to reach my files on the array. Here's what i do:

```

# ls -lan /dev/mapper/

total 0

drwxr-xr-x  2 0 0    60 May  8 14:47 .

drwxr-xr-x 17 0 0 14840 May  8 14:47 ..

lrwxrwxrwx  1 0 0    16 May  8  2008 control -> ../device-mapper

# dmraid -r 

/dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_afafjcdc", linear, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0

/dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_afafjcdc", linear, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0

```

So there it is, uninitialized. So let's make it active!

```

# dmraid -r 

/dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_afafjcdc", linear, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0

/dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_afafjcdc", linear, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0

# dmraid -ay

# dmraid -s

*** Active Set

name   : nvidia_afafjcdc

size   : 1953546240

stride : 64

type   : linear

status : ok

subsets: 0

devs   : 2

spares : 0

# ls -lan /dev/mapper/

total 0

drwxr-xr-x  2 0 0    100 May  8 14:56 .

drwxr-xr-x 17 0 0  14880 May  8 14:56 ..

lrwxrwxrwx  1 0 0     16 May  8  2008 control -> ../device-mapper

brw-r-----  1 0 6 252, 0 May  8 14:56 nvidia_afafjcdc

brw-r-----  1 0 6 252, 1 May  8 14:56 nvidia_afafjcdc1

# fdisk -l /dev/mapper/nvidia_afafjcdc

Disk /dev/mapper/nvidia_afafjcdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000215721984 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121602 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Disk identifier: 0xa7f2a7f1

                      Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System

/dev/mapper/nvidia_afafjcdc1               1      121602   976768033+   7  HPFS/NTFS

```

Ha! dmraid detected all parameters just fine and the partition is visible and identified as NTFS (and guess what - it is an NTFS partition   :Wink:  ).

So let's mount it!

```

# mount /dev/mapper/nvidia_afafjcdc1 /mnt/tmp/

```

So you might ask "Hey, but everything works! Where's your problem?!"

Let us wait no more. I give you... The Problem!

```

# ls -lan /mnt/tmp

ls: cannot access /mnt/tmp/Private: No such file or directory

ls: cannot access /mnt/tmp/Share: No such file or directory

total 12

dr-x------ 1 0 0    0 May  7 21:50 $AVG8.VAULT$

dr-x------ 1 0 0    0 May  8 12:38 $RECYCLE.BIN

dr-x------ 1 0 0 4096 May  8 12:38 .

drwxr-xr-x 9 0 0  256 Nov 29 11:10 ..

d????????? ? ? ?    ?            ? Private

-r-------- 1 0 0 2560 May  6 17:22 RECYCLER

d????????? ? ? ?    ?            ? Share

dr-x------ 1 0 0 4096 May  7 18:16 System Volume Information

```

As you can see above i can't reach any of my directories, neither "Share" nor "Private". Same occurs while using ntfs-3g driver. Has anyone came across such problem? 

PS. I know NTFS stinks  :Wink:  but it's the only option if you'd like to have files bigger then 4GB under windows and sometimes i need that. Still i'd like to have access to those files under linux.

EDIT@08.05.2008 21:39:

It looks like dmraid + device-mapper can't handle properly linear nvidia arrays (non RAID0). After migrating to RAID0 (stripe) all started working.Last edited by tigrysek on Thu May 08, 2008 7:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## cyrillic

Are you using any type of filesystem encryption with Windows ?

----------

## tigrysek

Nope. No encryption, no compression.

----------

## cyrillic

 *tigrysek wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> 
> # dmraid -s
> ...

 

I don't have any experience with dmraid, but if your BIOS is setup for RAID0, and device-mapper is setup for linear-RAID, this would cause a problem.

----------

## tigrysek

 *cyrillic wrote:*   

>  *tigrysek wrote:*   
> 
> ```
> 
> # dmraid -s
> ...

 

Now i'm confused. All i set up in bios was to enable RAID, all other setup was made using a nVidia MediaShield software under Window$, where i selected RAID0. Maybe nVidia has their own vision of RAID0  :Wink: 

Got to boot Window$ to check... 

```
dmraid -r
```

 also says "linear"...

----------

## tigrysek

 *tigrysek wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Now i'm confused. All i set up in bios was to enable RAID, all other setup was made using a nVidia MediaShield software under Window$, where i selected RAID0. Maybe nVidia has their own vision of RAID0 
> 
> Got to boot Window$ to check... 
> ...

 

So Window$ says... "Spanning" 

Damn! I hate this "Create an array wizard" thing! Got to rebuild array, thise time a real RAID0 from "RAID BIOS", no wizards  :Wink: .

Still the problem with reading filesystem remains. dmraid read the BIOS settings right, otherwise the filesystem would not be readable at all.

----------

## tigrysek

It's funny thing about getting to my mainboard RAID BIOS, but let's leave that for different topic  :Wink: 

It seems that device-mapper has some difficulties managing linear nvidia RAID. It works fine with RAID0.

----------

