Re: [PATCH] sata_mv: Fix broken Marvell 7042 support.

[Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca>]

Hein-Pieter van Braam wrote:
>>> I'll try and make a bootable USB stick with my patched 2.6.23.9 and see
>>> what the results are then.
>> ..
>>
>> How are you booting without the USB stick?
>> Are you booting from the Highpoint card drives?
>> What bootloader ?
>>
>> Thanks
>> -
> 
> Right now I just boot using GRUB really, perhaps the BIOS hides the 9th 
> sector if it's in some form of RAID mode? I haven't had any trouble
> using GRUB...
> 
> I haven't done anything special apart from putting the drives in JBOD
> mode, each disk is set to JBOD, it's set per disk, so not one large JBOD
> over 8 disks, but 8 separate JBOD volumes.
..

Man, what a quirky BIOS!

Okay, so if I connect a drive and don't do anything in the Highpoint BIOS setup,
it then corrupts the drive by overwriting the 9th sector on every reboot.

But.. if I connect a drive and go into the Highpoint BIOS setup,
and "initialize" the drive there, and then set it all as a "JBOD volume",
it then leaves the drive content untouched on subsequent reboots.

Screwy to the max.

So, I might be able to boot from it by cloning the disk *after* setting
it to "JBOD" in the BIOS.  That will take a (longish) while to do.