today i set up raid0 on my desktop machine. i split the array into two partitions and installed xp pro(sp2) on the first partition without any trouble. now i just tried to reinstall suse 10 and it tells me the 2.6.x kernel doesn't support my raid setup and i'll lose all my data. the website says to disable raid in the bios and use software raid. how do i set up a dual boot system? oh yeah, more info: the motherboard is an abit kn8 ultra (nforce4 ultra, nvraid, sata2)

Motherboard RAID is really just software RAID, done in the BIOS and then done in the disk driver in Windows. If your motherboard didn't come with Linux drivers, you're hosed.

What I would do is to set up partitions on the two disks, and use the OS RAID support (md on Linux, who-knows-what on XP) to run software RAID across those partitions. Of course, I typically run RAID 1, where losing a disk doesn't mean you lose everything, and seek performance is better than with RAID 0. (I find that I'm typically bound on latency, not throughput, of the disk).

thanks for the quick info! woot! i'm screwed! figures...

i wonder if it's worth it to try installing slackware or something with a 2.4 kernel.

You can always compile the RAID support into your kernel or simply use another distro that already comes with them. Ubuntu 5.10 fully supports NV4 chipsets and their RAID software IIRC. I think PCLinuxOS does too and I know from experience that VectorLinux doesn't.