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To: Paul van der Linden <msn@paultjuh.org>
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Hardware supported?
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Paul van der Linden wrote:
> I was mostly talking about the raid controller, the Intel ICH7 is
> mentioned on the hardware list:
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ata&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+6.2-RELEASE
>
> But they only mention ICH7 which is without raid. Does this mean the
> raid functionality isn't supported, or the complete ICH7 is
> supported(ICH7, ICH7R, enz)?

Onboard RAID does not really exist. The actual RAID is done by drivers;
onboard RAID is actually software RAID with a minor RAID BIOS which can
write metainformation about the array configuration and has BIOS
bootstrap support. This is also called "fake RAID". FreeBSD does support
some fake RAID metainformation though, by reading the metainfo from the
disks and assigning it's own software RAID-mechanism to it. For
information of which metainformation formats are supported, checkout the
ataraid(4) manpage:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ataraid&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+6.2-RELEASE&format=html

If your fakeraid is called "Intel MatrixRAID", then yes FreeBSD does
detect the metainfo and you will have a "ar0" for your first fakeraid
array. You should be able to install (and boot) from fakeRAID since
there is BIOS bootstrap support.

- Veronica