Yes, I know that Linux software raid can be faster, but no matter how you slice it its hard to get a a true "mirrored" disk drive setup using RAID. With a lot of configuration you can mirror ALMOST all of your partitions. Some has said they can even figure out how to mirror the boot and "/" partitions - but it's a lot of work.
Really? Insert SuSE DVD - go into partitioner, set / for RAIDN (N=0..5), set any other partitions for RAIDN, install Linux system as per normal, reboot, finished. Has been like that for years, though up to about 2 years ago yast only allowed to set up one raid volume during install beacsue of some silly bug. You made that the root filesystem then and changed the others later.
I've been fighting this for over a year and a half with Highpoint PATA controllers.
Highpoint is rubbish, just treat them as an IDE controller and you won't have any more problems with stupid/limited/propritary hardware.
Anybody have any different experience?
Yes. You can't blame your choice of $DISTRO on Linux raid support. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.