Joel, I've been heavily using ReiserFS over software RAID 0 across SCSI drives with 64-bit SuSE 9.1 on a dual-Opteron for the past couple of months without incident, so I think you're on the right track focusing on SATA or else you've got a hardware problem. Roy Joel Wiramu Pauling wrote:
I was using the latest suse 9.1 amd release kernel. Have an MSI Master2-Far which uses the via vt8xxx sata controller.
I had raid0 software stripe, of two identical hitachi 160gb's each drive had 1gb unstripped ext2/swap partition for boot.
I won't rule out the possibility that it was somthing to do with the sata_via kernel module. Also in the past I have noted that alot of people have wierd expereinces with the way which suse addresses the sata/raid of this chip Suse uses /dev/hdx to address the sata drives. Wheras all other distro's use sd layout. I had to not setup an array in the controller bios, and do it entirely through linux for it to work. Because if I setup the raid arrya first in the controller bios (stripe both discs full), then suse would still insist on recognising them as two seperate /dev/hdX...
Because I have heard other people with the board and setup have sucsesfully got other distros (i.e mandrake 10) to recognise the bios setup raid array as an sdX device. I beleive that suse is to blame partly.
I would like comment on this.
Like I said I have posted extensively on the setup of this system in suse, and the way which I was using it was the only configuration that worked...
Kind regards
Joel