Aragorn wrote:

> RAID arrays on these devices are sofware RAID-based but have some hardware
> support for certain RAID operations, provided that you use the motherboard
> manufacturer's RAID driver, which will in practice always be a
> binary-only, proprietary Windows driver.

Well there's actually the dm* stuff for that kind of fake raids under linux.
However, I wouldnt' advise my worst enemy to use that kludge :-),
especially since pure software raid as provided by linux kernel almost
always works better.

> Linux will simply see both hard disks as individual storage entities and a
> RAID set-up on these devices must for the Linux kernel therefore always be
> set up using the typical /dmraid/ tools, just as with hard disks attached
> to any other, non-RAID controllers.

ITYM mdraid (yes, I always confuse the two myself)/mdadm or raidtools.

For a good list of which SATA chips are true hw raid and which are fakeraid,
and linux support, these pages might help:

http://tinyurl.com/d6rn7
http://linux-ata.org

Regards