sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

["K. Posern" <quickhelp@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am really surprised that intel does not support stronger their fake
hardware raid drivers - at least with some documentation! :(

So I had to find out via live cd's that there is indeed a linux driver
for the intel fake hardware raid: dmraid -f isw

I am only familiar with mdadm software raids under linux. Hence the
question: How do these two compare? (speed/throughput, stability, features)

Google didn't really help. Now I tried to contact the dmraid
mailing-list. Maybe here someone can shed some light?

Because I would like the idea to keep native win7 boot as an option.
I don't think I will end up using it very often, once my gentoo is put
on this baby, but maybe for some games (yet the virtualization is not
yet where it can be performance wise - just one word: paravirtualized
grafic drivers :) ... anyway: Ah right and maybe at some point also
native MacOS - if it is true that the Insyde H2O BIOS in the new
z-series has an EFI core/layer (which is of course locked up) <<< can
someone confirm this?!

So back to dmraid: When delivered from Sony the VAIO comes with 3
primary partitions which presents itself under linux like this:
	dm-0 == 512 GB (my boss paid, that's why :)
	dm-1 == 12GB rescue partition <<< f10 / f11 or f12 do seem to boot
directly into this partition <<< is this controlled by the BIOS? <<< how
does this work? It just boots into the first primary partition on the
hdd --> so I could have my own rescue partition there?! - that would be
kinda neat <<< can someone comment on this?!
	dm-2 == 100MB win7 partition (pendant of linux /boot :)
	dm-3 == 480GB win7

So dm-0 seems to be everything (the full raid disk) --> I tried to look
at the partitions (partition table) with
	cfdisk /dev/md-0
But this threw just an error message back at me and a FATAL one en plus...:
	"FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the
final partial cyllinder"

What does "partition 1" refer to at this point: /dev/md-1? or maybe
/dev/sda1? <<< because I noticed that /dev/sda is also partitioned!
I forgot the details, but there was at least a /dev/sda1 <<< does anyone
know why? is this because the raid is fake --> the bios + win7 before it
loads the intel fake hardware raid driver only sees and starts from
/dev/sda ?!

But if I start with a new partition table:
	cfdisk -z /dev/md-0
And I can create partitions. Just now they are called: md-0p1, md-0p2...

Can someone tell me how to view the partition table under linux?

Because - I did not yet try parted, but only used the linux based
acronis disk-director (that also uses dmraid isw to access the raid) -
but they succeed and showing me the partions (and as I was able to
successfully repartition the drive they also needed to access the
partition table somehow...

.... I guess it is just because I am completely newbie to dmraid, but
I also did not find the word "raid" on the device-mapper redhat homepage
;) ... only the man-page seems not bad, but then again it does not seem
to answer my above questions about cfdisk /dev/md-0, the difference
between /dev/dm-1 and /dev/dm-0p1...
For now I would be interested to learn how to (re)partition the drive
(myself - without third party software) under linux without messing up
the win7 installation <<< if someone can point me to a nice fucking
manual (rtfm) that would enough :)

Best,

tormen.

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