I burned the live version of OpenSUSE 11.3 (Gnome, 32bit) to a CD to test the compatibility of an HP Pavilion p6510f. Although Xubuntu 10.4 booted up fine, OpenSUSE did not. A message about RAID would appear (too briefly to read) and then the computer would reboot.
I checked in the BIOS and found that the SATA drive has 3 modes: IDE, RAID and AHCI. The hard drive was set to RAID.
When I changed the hard drive mode to IDE, I was able to run the OpenSUSE live CD; but the change ruined my Windows installation. Windows doesn’t boot under IDE or RAID mode. (I have reset the mode to RAID and am restoring the Windows installation.)
Is there an option/argument that I can pass to the kernel so that OpenSUSE will work under RAID mode? (Since Xubuntu 10.4 was able to do it, I’m assuming OpenSUSE should be able to.)
How many hard drives do you have? RAID stands for redundant array of independent disks. Is is an advanced method to spread data out among multiple disks. If you only have one drive this option should not be used!!! There are alos multiple levels of RAID
The computer has one hard drive and one DVD burner. The hard drive is configured in “RAID” mode in the BIOS. This is how HP configured the hardware and OS.
> I burned the live version of OpenSUSE 11.3 (Gnome, 32bit) to a CD to
> test the compatibility of an HP Pavilion p6510f. Although Xubuntu
> 10.4 booted up fine, OpenSUSE did not. A message about RAID would
> appear (too briefly to read) and then the computer would reboot.
>
> I checked in the BIOS and found that the SATA drive has 3 modes: IDE,
> RAID and AHCI. The hard drive was set to RAID.
If you’ve only got one harddrive, I would expect AHCI to be the correct
setting.
>
> gogalthorp;2198346 Wrote:
>> How many hard drives do you have? RAID stands for redundant array of
>> independent disks. Is is an advanced method to spread data out among
>> multiple disks. If you only have one drive this option should not be
>> used!!! There are alos multiple levels of RAID
>>
>> ‘RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia’
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID)
>
> The computer has one hard drive and one DVD burner. The hard drive is
> configured in “RAID” mode in the BIOS. This is how HP configured the
> hardware and OS.
Didn’t your laptop come with the usual Windows installation? You
said “Windows doesn’t boot under IDE or RAID mode”, which leaves
AHCI …
The computer came with Windows 7 Home Premium installed and the hard drive set to RAID. Windows booted fine until I switched the mode to IDE. After that, it wouldn’t boot via IDE or RAID. I did not try AHCI.
I will try to use the live CD using AHCI. If it works, I will try to restore Windows with the hard drive in AHCI mode. Hopefully, I’ll get to a setting where I can dual boot.
> The computer came with Windows 7 Home Premium installed and the hard
> drive set to RAID. Windows booted fine until I switched the mode to
> IDE. After that, it wouldn’t boot via IDE or RAID. I did not try
> AHCI.
Some HP laptops do have room for two drives - I have a broken Pavilion
9000 in the office, it has two drives. In that context, RAID would make
some sense, but in a single-disk setting, I would advise to use AHCI.
> I will try to use the live CD using AHCI. If it works, I will try to
> restore Windows with the hard drive in AHCI mode. Hopefully, I’ll get
> to a setting where I can dual boot.
I changed the hard drive mode to IDE for compatibility with the BSD operating systems as well. When I restored the system, the system was put in the original state and booted into a setup phase, where entries were made to the Windows registry. Windows then booted up normally. Once I was sure I hadn’t lost Windows, I was able to install OpenSUSE 11.3 (64-bit) without a problem. All of the hardware appears to work or be recognized. (Firewire is recognized, but I haven’t tested it.)
A question on this … I’m looking at purchasing an HP 6510F (or a HP 6520F which has same H-RS880-uATX motherboard) for my mother.
I note from your post that the RAID setting gave openSUSE-11.3 problems.
After setting the motherboard BIOS sata drive setting to IDE (?) did you restore the Windows-7 boot from a recovery partition (?) or from a Windows-7 recovery boot CD ? Does this HP 6510F model even come with a Windows7 recovery CD ?
Also, how many partitions were on the SATA drive initially ? Two ?(main and a recovery partition) ?
I purchased an HP Pavilion p6510f a couple of weeks ago. After taking some time to get acquainted with Windows 7, I began my *nix compatibility search. The main issue that arose was regarding the hard drive controller “mode”. The default BIOS setting for the hard drive controller mode is RAID (there is only one drive). Other mode options are IDE and AHCI.
When the mode is set to RAID (default):
Xubuntu boots up fine.
OpenSUSE 11.3 and FreeBSD 8.1 stopped very early in the boot up process and begin a cycle of rebooting.
When the mode is set to IDE:
Xubuntu, OpenSUSE and FreeBSD boot up normally.
When the mode is set to AHCI:
Xubuntu and OpenSUSE boot up normally.
FreeBSD 8.1 (32 bit, 64 bit) freezes very early in the process.
Hardware component compatibility after a normal boot up:
Xubuntu 10.4 and FreeBSD 8.1 appears to detect everything except
wireless and sound.
OpenSUSE 11.3 appears to detect everything. Both sound and
wireless were used using the live (Gnome) CD.
WARNING: If you change the hard drive controller mode, you will kill your Windows installation. (yep, I did it). It is here that I earned a little appreciation for HP. The computer can be restored using the restore partition (or restore DVD’s burned immediately after my first setup). The restore system restores the computer to factory settings; but a lot of registry entries are done during the process. This means that the new mode (I chose AHCI) was detected during the restore process so Windows will expect AHCI instead of RAID.
Another detail I appreciate is that the computer comes with 4GB RAM that occupy 2 slots, leaving 2 slots free for RAM upgrades without having to replace existing RAM.
I think I may go for the IDE settings, if I end up purchasing this PC for my mother.
AHCI is fully supported out of the box for Windows Vista and Linux operating systems from kernel 2.6.19, as well as later operating systems such as Windows 7. NetBSD also supports drivers in AHCI mode out of the box in certain versions. …Older operating systems require hardware-specific drivers to support AHCI.
I confess I am struggling here myself. I’m working on my mother’s HP P6510F desktop PC, which comes with Windows7 home edition, with the BIOS setup for SATA as RAID. I know from surfing that Linux will not install with that setting, but when I change to AHCI in that BIOS setting, the PC boots to an error each time, giving me the option to either
microsoft system restore
microsoft startup repair tool
system recovery.
Trying to ignore this and do a reboot fails.
I can’t get the PC to boot to MS-Windows7 with AHCI in BIOS. Hence looks like I am in trouble here for installing Linux on this PC without trashing Windows7 which I don’t want to do.
I purchased an HP Pavilion p6510f a couple of weeks ago.
…
WARNING: If you change the hard drive controller mode, you will kill your Windows installation. (yep, I did it). It is here that I earned a little appreciation for HP. The computer can be restored using the restore partition (or restore DVD’s burned immediately after my first setup). The restore system restores the computer to factory settings; but a lot of registry entries are done during the process. This means that the new mode (I chose AHCI) was detected during the restore process so Windows will expect AHCI instead of RAID.
If I read this correctly, I need to select a “System Restore” and completely reinstall from the recovery partition ? (ie wipe out the existing Windows7 and re-install it ?? ).
Or is it a “System Recovery” I need to select ? I don’t know the difference between a “system restore” and a “sytem recovery”. I think I need to go to an HP or Microsoft site to get the explanation!
In preparation to changing the BIOS to AHCI and re-installing Win7 from the recovery partitions (which purported is needed for Win7 to run with AHCI settings) I have created the Win7 System Repair Disk, and also created the 3 x HP Recovery Disks for Win7 (which purportedly can restore the PC back to its original factory state, which is what we want to be able to do, EXCEPT we want AHCI and not RAID in BIOS).
My plan now is to simply reboot from win7, enter the BIOS configuration (press F10 to enter BIOS) change the BIOS ‘RAID’ setting to ‘AHCI’, and then when the win7 boot fails, restart, and this time press F11 to enter the HP recover system tool, which should re-install win7, but this time with the appropriate config to work with the BIOS AHCI setting.
If the win7 install fails from the recover system tool (partition) I now have the recovery DVDs I created to try again.
Once I have win7 installed with the AHCI settings, I will then be able to repartition the drive and install openSUSE-11.3 on the drive.
At least tha’ts the plan … experience will show if it survives contact with reality.
I failed with the effort to install Win7 with the BIOS AHCI setting. It refuses to boot to the desktop after an install, but instead takes me to a recovery menu (safemode, safemode with network, boot windows directly … etc …) where none of the settings work.
I tried installing twice from the win7 partition and once from the 3 recovery DVDs. The same problem each time. Despite others having succeeded with the BIOS AHCI setting, it (win7) simply does NOT work for me on this same PC.
It (win7) will work with RAID, but thats not the point. Linux will NOT work with RAID, and hence I need to use AHCI.
Its frustrating.
I'm currently scratching my head over this one.