# Asus P6T deluxe v2 dmraid raid rebuild not supported

## madhusker

Asus P6T deluxe v2

Note: this is hardware raid, not software.  The raid is setup in the bios.  (at least I believe this is true hardware raid)

I did a test fail on a disk to see if i could manage to rebuild it. I cannot find anywhere to even monitor the status.  When rebooting the BIOS controller shows the status in "rebuild" and says it will be rebuilt by the operating system. I am assuming that I need some tools to do it. Does anyone know of software that will monitor and rebuild a raid on the Asus P6T deluxe v2 SATA hardware raid?  dmraid does not do the trick.

# lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev 12)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 12)

00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 12)

00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub PCI Express Root Port 7 (rev 12)

00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub System Management Registers (rev 12)

00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch Pad Registers (rev 12)

00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub Control Status and RAS Registers (rev 12)

00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev 12)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5

00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 1

00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 3

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 5

00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 6

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller

00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 SATA RAID Controller

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller

02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 9800 GT (rev a2)

04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

05:00.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE6121 SATA II Controller (rev b2)

06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)

08:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev c0)Last edited by madhusker on Sun Jul 05, 2009 4:46 pm; edited 2 times in total

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## d2_racing

If you find one, let me know, because I plan to use this board at work  :Razz: 

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## madhusker

Some people say its really software raid but looks like hardware since its setup in the BIOS.  How to know?  mdadmin doesn't see it.  dmraid does see it and I can't find much of any documentation on how to make it work.  The man page tells how to recover an array but it doesnt seem to work.

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## madhusker

It looks as if dmraid rebuilds are NOT supported.  Here is output of trying to rebuild a Raid 1 mirror.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> # dmraid -R isw_bddgbciihb_Server
> 
> Volume "isw_bddgbciihb_Server" is not in rebuild state (current: 4)
> ...

 

This shows the mirror is ok, but its NOT.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> # dmraid -s
> 
> *** Group superset isw_bddgbciihb
> ...

 

Everything written to disk after the failure was not save.  It seems it was maybe put into these files??

 *Quote:*   

> ~# ls -l
> 
> total 4
> 
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-07-05 10:07 dmraid.isw
> ...

 

~# dmraid -r

 *Quote:*   

> /dev/sdd: isw, "isw_ecfjdjhfcc", GROUP, ok, 1953525166 sectors, data@ 0
> 
> /dev/sdc: isw, "isw_ecfjdjhfcc", GROUP, ok, 1953525166 sectors, data@ 0
> 
> /dev/sdb: isw, "isw_bddgbciihb", GROUP, ok, 1953525166 sectors, data@ 0
> ...

 

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## krinn

fakeraid, like nearly all asus m/b

The so-called fakeraid isn't call like that because it's a software raid, but because you have the taste without having raid  :Very Happy: 

so you have a bios that handle raid, but no controller that handle it, and this part is done by software (your cpu). So performances of the raid are affect by cpu charge as in software raid, it's just that the bios build the array for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Firmware.2Fdriver-based_RAID

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## madhusker

So if the BIOS software raid is only "better" managed software raid for windows users, I would be better off to mdadm my own software raid and be able to reconstruct with a well known and well developed mdadm tool?  Looks like dmraid is out....

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## krinn

 *madhusker wrote:*   

> So if the BIOS software raid is only "better" managed software raid for windows users, I would be better off to mdadm my own software raid and be able to reconstruct with a well known and well developed mdadm tool?  Looks like dmraid is out....

 

is only better managed software raid: Can't even said better, easier yes. Generally it's just a simple menu by bios that let you feel you have a ferrari in your hands.

So i won't say better, easier: maybe, cheerful: at first yes, kinda feel cheat after  :Razz: 

i can't produce any stats (never really dig the problem) but i just assume performances are the same with plain software raid and fake raid (it should, except if you're still in the cheerful phase "oh my god, i have raid onboard!", you should agree as they are just both software raid).

You will still have performances gain, even software, 2 hdd writing 50g should be faster than 1 writing 100g

What i'm sure off is : using dmraid is really a pain vs mdadm, i really hate initrd and ramdisk.

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## madhusker

Great info... Thanks!   I just didn't want to go software raid and then learn later that this expensive board had better performance with the fake raid.  In theory the differences logically could only be minimal.  I am going with mdadm software raid and sending dmraid packing...  It's been a PITA thus far but on the other hand this is a new board so we can't expect the world to support it either!

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## NeddySeagoon

madhusker,

Its fakeraid for sure. The ICH10 has some hardware raid 'acceleration' but these features may not be used by dmraid and they will not add anything to raid1 or raid0, even if the dmraid driver can use them.

mdraid is preferred over dmraid as mdraid sets are portable between chipsets, motherboards etc. If you need to move a dmraid raid set somewhere else, you need the same chipset and BIOS. Further, mdraid is more mature than dmraid. Both are provided by kernel modules so there should be little performance difference.

IF you are using raid1, dmraid tries to balance reads over every mirror for improved read speed. dmraid doesn't do this yet.

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## madhusker

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> madhusker,
> 
> Its fakeraid for sure. The ICH10 has some hardware raid 'acceleration' but these features may not be used by dmraid and they will not add anything to raid1 or raid0, even if the dmraid driver can use them.
> 
> mdraid is preferred over dmraid as mdraid sets are portable between chipsets, motherboards etc. If you need to move a dmraid raid set somewhere else, you need the same chipset and BIOS. Further, mdraid is more mature than dmraid. Both are provided by kernel modules so there should be little performance difference.
> ...

 

Thanks for the reply.  In your last sentence; do you mean mdraid balances reads and dmraid does not?  Pretty sure that's what you mean since dmraid is not very mature yet.  I am a little surprised that dmraid lacks so many mature features being at a 1.0 RC code level.  Seems like it should be 0.8.0 or something.  I guess this caught me off guard a little and I was thinking I must missing something here.

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## NeddySeagoon

madhusker,

Correct. Provided there is something to balance, mdraid tries to balance reads over every mirror ...

You probably need real world loads to see any benefit.

Sorry about the typo

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