Maximum PC

Anyone know a workaround for getting Ubuntu to see my RAID 5 array? It's run through an ICH9 chipset on an X38 board. I've already partitioned the array in Vista, and now want to dual boot Ubuntu. I kept a partition empty for Ubuntu, but when I try to install Ubuntu it only sees my four separate HDs.

Need more info about the hardware bud...

I am not sure you should be having any issues. You created the array, but did you create a volume inside the controller?

Getting Linux to work with the onboard RAID controllers can be a bit of a PITA. Here are a few links I dug up when I was trying to do the same thing:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto
http://www.ubuntu-in.org/wiki/SATA_RAID_Howto
For dual booting Ubuntu and XP

Wow - thanks for the links. That is a weird process, but probably better than adding a fifth HD. I'd been looking all over for info on that, and it's pretty sparse. Think I'll give it a try after making a disk clone.

I never actually got it to work to be honest. After spending a couple weekends on getting it to work, I ended up taking the easy way out and bought a seperate 160GB drive...
But that was several builds ago, and Ubuntu's drivers may be a little better now. Or maybe youll have better luck since youre on a different chipset (Im on an NVidia 680i).

Hmm - I haven't been able to get it to work, either. At least I managed to avoid zapping my Windows install, though, so that's something.
In doing all this I've come across references saying Fedora and Gentoo-based distros can see RAID partitions out of the box.
Anyone have any experience with those? I've used Suse and Ubuntu, and those seem reasonably similar, so I'm hoping to find a new distro that's in the same ballpark.

When I was messing with it, Fedora was only on Core 7 (theyre at Fedora 8 now), so maybe they got it worked out. I remember them pushing it when I was messing with Linux, although I pretty much gave up due to the fact that there were no drivers for my X-Fi yet.

Its worth giving it a shot. If Fedora works let us know. I might have to give it a try again. It seems like there has been some development with drivers for X-Fi:
http://opensource.creative.com/soundcard.html

I tried Fedora this morning and, unfortunately, had no luck. They're up to 8, but I tried it with that and also 7, thinking it might be better supported. I also tried Sabayon and Blag. Both Fedora and Gentoo-based distros have reputations for being able to read fakeRAID setups, so I'm guessing it's m chipset. I have an X38 board that runs the RAID through an ICH9 southbridge.
Oh well, I also have a Netgear NAS box that lacks Vista 64-bit drivers, so maybe I'll just cannibalize a drive outta that.
On the plus side, there seems to be some discussion in the forums of the bigger distros about this problem, so hopefully things will improve. I'm a huge fan of Linux, but as a gamer am not willing to entirely swear off Windows.

Yeah, the fakeRAID is just a huge PITA when it comes to linux. I dont know of any distros that support it out of the box. You can get them recognized but thats not until Linux is already installed.