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Promise Fast Trak SX4000
Reviews Views Date of last review
3 7570 05-10-2004
spacer
Recommended By Average Price Average Rating
33% of reviewers $217.33 4.0



Description: from Promise's website
The FastTrak SX4000 Overview
The FastTrak SX4000 ATA RAID PCI adapter delivers industry-leading RAID 5 performance at an unprecedented performance-to-price ratio. For companies running popular applications like web services, file/email servers, audio/video streaming and nearline storage, the FastTrak SX4000 opens the world of professional RAID 5 performance and data protection and combines it with cost-effective Ultra ATA (PATA) drives for the ultimate internal storage solution. Based on OEM-proven RAID 5 technology, the FastTrak SX4000 competes with SCSI RAID 5 controllers--at one-half to one-third of the price. RAID 5 storage protection is no longer the privilege of budget-rich IT departments
Keywords: RAID SX4000 Promise ATA
/sbin/lspci output: 02:0d.0 RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20621 [SX4000]
Chipset: PDC20621
Connection Type: ATA


Author
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Old 11-08-2003, 04:25 PM   #1
mcleodnine
 
Registered: May 2001
Distribution: s l a c k w a r e
Posts: 2,731
Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: $210.00 | Rating: 2

Kernel (uname -r): 2.4.20
Distribution: Slackware



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We picked up this card because Promise claimed it was Linux Compatible. Bung. Binary-only drivers for micro-specific distributions makes this card moslty useless in any production Linux environment, which I could never in good conscience recommend any of our clients use it. Giving up on it and selling the card to someone else. Currently in the market for some 3Ware goods.

See this page for a more thorough investigation.

In short - if you want to run an old outdated kernel that you can't update then this thing might work for you. Try a Google search for "sx4000, lkml" and get a better insight into why not to use this card in Linux.
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Old 02-19-2004, 05:59 AM   #2
stratosl
 
Registered: Feb 2004
Posts: 0
Would you recommend the product? yes | Price you paid?: $200.00 | Rating: 8

Kernel (uname -r): 2.4.21-0.27mdkenterprise
Distribution: Mandrake Linux 9.1


The previous post is correct, regarding the lack of support on the official Promise web site.

However, there is a group at yahoo, at the address

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sx4000linux/

and the corresponding web site

http://majestic.lugh.de/~fs/promise/index.html

In the above, one may find drivers that may be compiled to run on any kernel version (have not tried it personally with 2.6.x series).

In my own box I run a RAID-5 w/ 3 disks and it works fine. I also use the array utilities from the Promise support download page (which were meant for Redhat).

It is important to install the latest firmware, which is currently 2.0.0.4 (new one is expected in March 04)

Regards,

StratosL
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Old 05-10-2004, 11:00 AM   #3
jjulian
 
Registered: May 2004
Posts: 0
Would you recommend the product? no | Price you paid?: $242.00 | Rating: 2

Kernel (uname -r): various
Distribution: various


This product has no native Linux support. The drivers released by Promise, including the ones on the web sites described by stratosl, are pre-compiled for single thread i386 only. The "source" available uses 3 object libraries.

Promise claims that their drivers contain "intellectual property" and cannot be released to the public domain, though how a hardware company can feel threatened by making their hardware compatible I have no idea.
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