Desastre de cortejo com fakeRAID10 (Dual Boot Win7, Ubuntu14.10)

Question

Nas últimas semanas (!), tenho tentado configurar uma inicialização dupla com o Windows 7 Enterprise e o Ubuntu Desktop 14.10. A placa-mãe é uma Sabertooth x79 , e eu queria instalar tudo em um RAID10 composta por quatro HDDs de 2 TB.

Histórico / Meu Processo / Descrição:

The x79 supports some kind of RAID, which I initially assumed was hardware-based. By changing a switch in the BIOS, you can change from AHCI to RAID. You can then set up a RAID array by pressing CTRL+I during boot (_{^{the previous owner of the computer had adjusted overclocking settings in the BIOS, which was preventing this menu appearing; resetting to defaults fixed that. Also, you need to have the BIOS's RAID option chosen}}).

Installing Windows 7:

Windows doesn't have drivers for the RAID configuration, so on boot it doesn't find any disks. Copying the motherboard's drivers onto a USB stick (or using the newer one here) and letting Windows use these drivers during the install (_{^{you must navigate to the directory directly; Windows doesn't search folders for drivers recursively}}) allows Windows recognize the RAID10 array as a single drive and install without incident.

Installing Ubuntu Desktop:

Setting up Ubuntu was more of a pain. Although I could boot from a flash drive image, Ubuntu recognized the array--but not as a single disk: as two RAID1 (I think; might've been RAID0 instead, although this would make less sense) disks with several partitions. Thus, Ubuntu was recognizing only one level of the recursive RAID.

Some more research indicated that this meant that the RAID was not actually a hardware RAID but one step higher: a fakeRAID, which isn't OS-managed like a software RAID nor managed with (completely) dedicated hardware like a hardware RAID.

After many false starts for how to proceed, I finally found this stackexchange post. Essentially, you connect to the internet, disable dmraid, and install mdadm instead. You then call mdadm --assemble --scan to get the system to recognize the fakeRAID as a single drive. Then, you use gparted to partition it. After several attempts, I got that working, putting a small EXT4 and a swap partition immediately after the two NTFS partitions created by Windows (the larger of which I shrunk).

When it came time to actually install Ubuntu, however, the installer outright crashed midway (I looked through the log and it looked GRUB-related). I tried it again with the same result.

Since the Ubuntu USB evidently doesn't save state, rebooting shows the RAID10 array as separate RAID arrays again (since mdadm doesn't exist anymore). As a last-ditch effort (and this is the key part), I then installed Ubuntu onto one of the EXT4 partitions. The install completed successfully.

Now, the system happily boots into Windows or Ubuntu.

No entanto, acredito que isso seja um desastre.

O problema é que eu (acho que) só instalei o Ubuntu em um dos arrays dentro do array RAID10.

• Se realmente foram dois RAID1s expostos ao SO, parece que eu instalei o Ubuntu em uma metade das faixas como se fossem contíguas . Nota: a inicialização ainda pode ser bem-sucedida se o Ubuntu acreditar que o RAID10 são RAID1s separados imediatamente após a inicialização.
• Se foram dois RAID0s expostos ao sistema operacional (ou seja, o controlador virou a visualização, então parece RAID01), então eu instalei o Ubuntu em apenas um espelho (então, o Ubuntu não é realmente backup, e em qualquer caso, se as leituras acontecem a partir do RAID0 não escrito, então algo desagradável vai acontecer).

Antes de colocar qualquer dado real sobre isso, preciso saber o que aconteceu e se os sistemas operacionais estão configurados corretamente. Minhas perguntas (em prioridade crescente):

1. A minha análise está correta? Eu só instalei o Ubuntu em metade do array fakeRAID? Ou, escrever para a metade de um array fakeRAID faz o hardware gravar automaticamente no outro, mesmo que o sistema operacional (neste caso, um LiveCD) não seja inteligente o suficiente para informar?
2. Se realmente houver um problema, existe uma maneira de corrigi-lo (para que os dados também sejam gravados na outra metade)?
3. Existe algum tipo de consistência RAID para [falso] que eu possa executar?