# AT7 + hpt374 + I don't even need the raid!

## icespirit

First let me congratulate the guys behind gentoo. I installed it yesterday and I have fallen in love.

So I bought a fancy shmancy AT7 with its 6 ide ports (2 regular 4 raid (htp374)). I have about 9 harddrives which I want to put on this motherboard. I don't even want the raid features, they are no use to me. I just want to use the raid ports as regaular IDE ports without any raid arrays. Have I messed up?.

I compiled every possible hpt/raid related module into the kernel (or as modules in some case) to make sure everything was available but now I can't figure out how to get my pc to recognise the extra ports. 

# modprobe hptraid

snip - errors - snip

# dmesg

Highpoint HPT370 Softwareraid driver for linux version 0.01

No raid array found

But I don't even want a raid array. I googled for a few hours trying to find help but the 374 is quite a new chipset (even thought I would have thought it is the same as 370/372 but with more ports).

Can anyone suggest how I can use these 4 raid ports as regular ide.

I also tried using Alan Cox's linux patch but I cleverley choose to use xfs and so can't patch the xfs source tree with his patch's.

Richard

p.s. Just to make sure its clean - I DONT want the raid.

p.p.s I'm busy trying to clear off a couple of the disks to see if even creating a raid array will make the system recognise the disks

----------

## r.j.hall

I also have the same motherboard and am trying to get the disks attached to the hpt374 controller to be rcognised in a JBOD (just A Bunch Of Disks) arrangement.

I hope someone has the same motherboard and a working configuration.

----------

## taskara

hello!

if you don't want raid, then don't 

```
insmod hptraid
```

there is a driver for the highpoint ide, and a seperate one for raid.

I'm not sure if the 1.4 cd supports these controllers yet however - because there were some issues b4.

but I believe the 1.2 cd does indeed support the controllers.

all you need to have is the driver for the highpoint controller (NOT raid) and then you should be able to fdisk /dev/hdx

you can also setup software raid (which should be better than the highpoint raid anyway  :Wink: ) if you want to.. and to do this you still don't 

```
insmod hptraid
```

 but that's another story, and there is a guide under docs.

----------

## maj

hi there, have gentoo installed fine on a hard drive on one of the read channels used as JBOD (i like that term  :Smile: ) 

had to use the experimental CD (search google for getoo experimental - its how i found it) as the kernel used on it has support for the hpt374 - when you need to emerge a kernel as per the install instructions, emerge gentoo sources r7, they are based upon the 2.4.19 kernel and if you enable htp366 support in it, the drives attached to the 374 will work fine (newer kernels dont seem to have the support)

hope this helped

----------

## taskara

 *maj wrote:*   

> hi there, have gentoo installed fine on a hard drive on one of the read channels used as JBOD (i like that term ) 
> 
> had to use the experimental CD (search google for getoo experimental - its how i found it) as the kernel used on it has support for the hpt374 - when you need to emerge a kernel as per the install instructions, emerge gentoo sources r7, they are based upon the 2.4.19 kernel and if you enable htp366 support in it, the drives attached to the 374 will work fine (newer kernels dont seem to have the support)
> 
> hope this helped

 

you can get the latest experimental cd here (from 14th jan 2003)

----------

## stefanonafets

If you didn't solve your problem, download and burn the 1.2 cd, it works...

----------

## Robelix

Any success stories about this?

I'm thinking about an Epox  EP-8K5A3+ board with a HPT374 for a "space-box". In this case size matters, also the price, but not speed.

I'd start with 3 HDs, CD-RW and DVD-ROM, more Disks to be added when required.

Does such a board make sense, or is it better to get a standard board with additional IDE-cards?

And another thing interesting me: If I add another disk to a JBOD, is it possible to resize the existing partitions or should I use lvm?

Robelix

----------

## taskara

well gentoo 1.4_rc4 is out, and I think that has some raid support... do a search for 1.4_rc4 and raid or something  :Smile: 

----------

