3ware controllers are supported in Vanilla kernel since 'ages'. A command line interface namend tw_cli is available on the download webpage at 3ware.com. A webinterface (providing remote access) is available through the debian-unofficial.org-project:
deb http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free restricted deb-src http://ftp.debian-unofficial.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free restrictedThere are two packages available: 3ware-3dm2-new-binary (for 3ware 9550SX) and 3ware-3dm2-old-binary (for 3ware 700x, 750x, 800x, 850x, 900xS, 950xS). 3ware-3dm2-old-binary is included in grml.
ICP Vortex should work as well and provides linux drivers as well, but I've no experience in using them yet...
That's stuff like Intel ICHx, VIA, Silicon, Adaptec and Promise RAID. Accessing such a RAID is possible with kernel 2.6 using device mapper ('DM') and dmraid (both provided by grml) [kernel 2.4 requires ataraid].
Important: there's a lot of documentation hanging around, describing how to use software raid with raidtools2. raidtools2 is not maintained by its upstream developers anymore and has been replaced by the package mdadm. The last debian package version of raidtools2 shipping the binaries is 1.00.3-17 (available on grml), afterwards it's just a dummy package with dependency on mdadm.
Things to take care of:
cfdisk /dev/hda # select type FD (Linux raid autodetect) cfdisk /dev/hdc # select type FD (Linux raid autodetect) mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=raid1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/hda1 /dev/hdc1 # create raid mdadm --detail /dev/md0 # show details of raid system cat /proc/mdstat # now wait until raid sync has finished (otherwise performance sucks) SWRAID='mbr-only' grml2hd /dev/md0 --mbr /dev/md0 # install grml to raid cat /proc/mdstat # again wait until raid sync has finished
mdadm --detail /dev/md0 # show details of raid system cat /proc/mdstat # details of mdstat mdadm --fail /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1 # mark disk as faulty mdadm -r /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1 # remove disk from array mdadm -a /dev/md0 /dev/hdc1 # integrate disk into array mdadm --manage --stop /dev/md0 # stop multidevice mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 # start multidevice
Notice: if you have any chance to boot Windows for accessing the SW-RAID this methode should be prefered. If you can't boot anymore try to boot with a Windows Live-CD (using BartPE). The command line tool diskpart is very useful (start using it via 'select disk $NUMBER', 'detail disk', 'list disk', 'list volume',...).