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I am attempting to create a RAID 5 array of 4 disks using an on board SATA RAID controller of a ASUS H87 mini ITX motherboard. The OS I am attempting to install is UBUNTU 14.04.1. I have successfully configured it in the BIOS. However, I see them as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd.

Is this normal? I expected to see the disk bundled as a single disk. What do I need to do to mount a raid volume configured in the BIOS setup?

Lord Loh.
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  • It sounds like your mobo doesn't have a RAID controller built in. You will need to either use a software RAID or some alternative like ZFS. – jmreicha Aug 30 '14 at 21:02

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Your board doesn’t have a real RAID controller. Its built-in functionality only works with “DOS”. A modern operating system (one that doesn’t access disks through legacy BIOS mechanisms) needs special drivers to support these RAID arrays. Because of this, it’s known as FakeRAID.

Linux can support this configuration too, using Disk Mapper. However, I recommend switching to regular AHCI mode (in your UEFI setup) and letting Linux handle everything RAID (with MD-RAID). It’s vastly more powerful and stable. I don’t know if Ubuntu Setup provides an easy interface for this, though.

Daniel B
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  • You have to use the advanced disk setup / manual disk configuration during setup. You used to have to download the "alternative" disk. – Kinnectus Aug 30 '14 at 21:04