i have a seagate 200GB SATA and a Sil3112A (silicon Image) controller..the problem is they work like ass in linux..im not able to enable to dma, cause it seems that seagate is blacklisted in the silicon image drivers..can anyone tell me which controller runs well in linux?

thanks all,esp Emmanuel_uk

Changing to a different controller will not change the fact that your drive is blacklisted - the disk will still act incorrectly.

If you only care about speed and not data integrity you could open up /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/sata_sil.c and comment out your drive model in sil_blacklist and recompile your kernel.


Håkan

thanks for the reply...when were talking about data integrity are we talking about crashes every few seconds?i only have a home desktop machine and just use it for the regular stuff..no server applications,etc..so commenting out the blacklist shouldnt be a problem right?

just uncommented the blacklist and im getting thrice the speed..!just hope everything doesnt come crashing down...thanks very much for the help..

I ran my desktop (an Abit NF7-S revision 2 based setup with a Seagate SATA disk) for three months or so with the blacklist enabled. I had no problems with data integrity, so I don't know how often these problems occur. I wouldn't do it on my work computers though. My home desktop is mainly for messing about - I do all my work on my laptop.


Håkan

Hello, and sorry for bringing this thread back from the dead, but could you please tell me how you made the sata controller work? I have the silicon image 3114 one, and I dont know whats wrong, it doesnt seem to work. I bought a 160gb seagate drive in order to put all my videos and share them, but I had to buy the controller cos of lack of slots, but Im having problems enabling it ( i compiled my own kernel, it didnt work, i also installed the 2.6.11 kernel from synaptic-ubuntu but it got stuck in the xserver, couldnt load it )

I also tried modprobe sata-sil but I dont know what to do next, nothing shows up as /dev/sd* as I have been told.

Thanks a lot in advance

i have the same problem. but i don't have onther HDD so pl tell me how can i install on segete SATA HDD with sil controler ?

silicon image support should be enabled under

Device drivers->scsi->SCSI-Low level drivers->sata support

screw building it as a module cause its a big hassle (especially when your root is on the drive)..just build it into the kernel..(if ure using make xconfig this means that a checkbox and not a (.) next to the kernel config option)