No Partition Visible After Restart

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi All,

I’m a bit of newbie, so go easy on me please!

I’ve decided to install openSUSE on my Dell PowerEdge SC1420. It’s got an onboard Adaptec CERC SATA 2S RAID controller that I’ve used to set up a RAID 0 using 2x 250GB SATA drives. The SATA RAID is enabled in BIOS (which I’ve updated to v. A04) and the logical device is set to bootable.

openSUSE sees the logical device and sets up 4 partitions (3x Ext4 and 1x SWAP) and install seems to go okay. I get through to the GNOME desktop and everything seems to be working okay until I reboot. Then I get an error saying that no partition is detected from the CERC 2S device.

Can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong? I’ve spent the entire weekend trying different configurations of raid and partion file systems! I’m on the verge of buying windows 7 and I guess I’ll have to if this just isn’t going to work!!

Please Help!

Ta very much.

Steve

#2

I’m afraid at some point, people here are going to ask you why you need RAID 0 and will propably advice you not to do it.

#3

Hi,

thanks for the response.

Why is that then? I used RAID 0 to try and eek out a bit more speed. Should I just use them as 2 seperate drives?

Thanks

Steve

#4

If this is a linux only machine, then use software raid.(more efficient, more reliable, etc),unless this is proper hardware raid, but then you would not be seeing these problems.

#5

With RAID 0 , the risk on losing everything is higher than the benefit. In my opinion, nobody needs RAID 0. If you want more speed, get a SSD drive and put the system on it. It will be way faster than RAID 0.

#6

Believe me (or not) … but life is easier with Linux (whether openSUSE or any other one).

#7

Hi guys,

thanks for the quick replies but I wanted to work with what I’ve got. I don’t think the RAID is the problem though, as, as I said, the openSUSE installer can see the logical device and the install goes without a hitch. The problem is when the system reboots - the RAID controller sees the logical device okay, but the system can’t see a bootable partition…

Thanks

Steve

#8

Ha ha!! It does look great, I have to say, but the evaluation copy of windows 7 i had went on the RAID no problemo!

#9

Because Window has the secret sauce built in.

If you are doing a pure Linux install use software RAID or a real hardware RAID card.

RAID 0 is bad because you lose one drive all data is lost. Every other sector is on the other drive.
RAID 1 is a mirror so every sector is duplicated on each drive.
RAID 5 requires 4 drives is both RAID 0 AND RAID 1

#10

Hi Again,

okay, I thought I’d try a different approach:

  1. delete logical device
  2. disable RAID in BIOS
  3. install openSUSE to drive 0 (SATA)

everything went on fine and after reboot, openSUSE booted okay, so it’s not a problem with the DELL not seeing the file system.

  1. enable RAID in BIOS
  2. create a new RAID 0 logical device by migrating from drive 0
  3. left it running overnight
  4. openSUSE tries to boot from logical drive but installation is now corrupt!
  5. I try to run the repair program from the install disk but it asks for a user account and the one i set up with openSUSE doesn’t work…
#11

Hi All,

My question wasn’t about which RAID to use, or even if I should be using RAID at all, but why i couldn’t boot openSUSE once it had installed onto my RAID device.

I’ve now discovered how to do it. At the last screen of the GUI wizard before Install is clicked, the summary lists the boot options and the Master Boot Record (MBR)option is set to disabled. Click on the enable link and hey presto.

Thanks

Steve

#12

I’m a little bit disappointed. OpenSUSE was the only distro that “works” with live cd in my computer, I really love this distro! but I have a huge problem. I installed it on my computer everything was ok, I just had to use with no acpi, no problem. On the other hand when the computer restarted after the “installation” it says that it has a problem with agp and it cannot find the hard disc and I don´t know what else to do, even I went to teh B.I.O.S to change something to try to see opensuse running, but I failed and I don´t know what to do!
By the way, It’s a toshiba laptop, L515 core i3, 3gb ddr3 hdd Hitachi; I’m adding a screenshot with the message.http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=14374031&o=all&op=1&view=all&subj=2256834487&id=800920486

#13

Use software RAID rather then FAKE (BIOS) RAID. It is faster any way.

#14

The Adaptec CERC SATA 2S Raid is an integrated software based RAID implementation. Is there any software out there that I could use to benchmark the 2 methods?