Being the SATA revolution in the PC industry, I'm compelled to ask:

What brands and chipsets would make a good PCI SATA card (preferrably with 4 ports) and price tags/range?

Hello

I have had good successs with Highpoint RAID controllers in the past. They make a four-port SATA RAID PCI card that I almost went with when I built my current system. Instead, I decided to make use of the onboard RAID feature on my current mainboard (which only supports two devices) and upgrade to Highpoint in the future if I need to. I'm not inclined to do that until SATA drives become faster/more reliable.

I have also heard good things about Promise RAID cards, but they aren't much for support in Linux (which I use)

Regards

Tony

does anyone have some SATA's article?
i want it
thanks

I don't understand what you're asking about.. please clarify your request..

Thanks

Tony

i only want some technology documentation about SATA
my english is poor

I'll try a google search on SATA whitepapers (if there are any available on the Net), maybe you could too and compare results?

What is it excatly that you're interested in learning about? My only experience with SATA so far is assembling a SATA RAID-0 array for Windows XP and Red Hat 9. I'm not entirely convinced that SATA drives perform better than EIDE drives in a similar (RAID) configuration, but the architecture seems to be gaining some popularity.

I would have a hard time recommending SATA for people who want it because it's "faster".. none of the benchmarks I've read indicate that a stand-alone SATA drive is any faster than a standard IDE drive. I think that SATA holds some promise in the future when faster drives start coming out, but that's just not the case today.

regards


Tony

Hello everybody,

Before I start, here´s brief overview of my machine´s hardware configuration:
MB Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
integrated SATA controller Sil3112A, 2 channels, RAID 0,1
2x HDD Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB
OS SuSE Linux Professional 9.0 (kernel 2.4.22-99)

I would appreciate any help with the following problem:
I´m able to install my distribution onto /dev/hde or /dev/hdg (that´s how the system recognizes both hard drives) either with hardware RAID 1 turned on or without (single drive).With GRUB boot loader there´s problem after 1st reboot - I get "grub>_ " prompt, system doesn´t know where´s the kernel.With LILO boot loader it seems quite better...system goes up and running.I can login and I can see messages in my boot log (dmesg) that SATA controller was recognized, hard drives too but DMA is off (only PIO mode) and that they are "not 100% native".

First question - How do I know that controller is working and doing RAID 1 properly on the basis of hardware ?? I can see "no file system" on my second (mirrored) hard drive /dev/hdg...suppose there should be exact copy of "original one" /dev/hde ??
Second question - Does anybody have working RAID 1 set (hardware, not soft one) on his machine??
Thanks for any answers,

P.S. I checked all post in this and similar threads on LQ, but haven´t found any satisfied information...not yet :-)...I also tried to compile and install new 2.6.2 kernel - no results.Please excuse my English too, I´m not native speaker.

thank ajkrishock for your advice,i only want to learn about basic knowledge of SATA,because i hear about that SATA is more popular than EIDE.
why? faster or hotplug?i have no idea of SATA.

I have a Maxtor 120gb SATA hardrive, and im trying to install Linux Mandrake, ive downloaded the right drivers i think off the silicon image website. But im not sure what to do with them since im new to linux, I managed to use the mkfloppy file and made a floppy but this doesnt seem to work.
When Mandrake boots from the cdrom, i hit F1 and type expert, it asks me to insert a linux (ex2fs) floppy, when i do it says cant find ext2 floppy.

Can someone please please help.

Okay,

A couple of questions:

First to "Vosa":
The Silicon Chip on your board is no real Hardware-RAID. In fact it is software (the driver) that let's the drives act as either RAID 0 or 1. Now since it is a software solution anyway, the Linux-folks decided that i doesn't make sense to write another RAID-driver, because there already is a software-RAID included in Linux.
So irrespective what you set your "RAID"-BIOS to, Linux will detect the drives as individual drives and if you want to set them up as a RAID you have to do this manually (it is not that difficult).
HOwever, one setback. The driver provided by SuSE 9.0 is not very stable. I tried to setup a Server and it turned out to cause trouble after a few days. There is a more recent driver in the latest kernels (2.6.x). If you know who to do a new kernel that is the way to go.
If you would like to boot from a RAID-sytem, you should defintively go for a self made kernel (Include SATA, RAID and your filesystem, presumably ReiserFS)

Now to "Aeolus":
SATA is both: Faster (even though nobody managed so far to get the idela 150 MB/s.) My personal experiences ist about 1.7-2x times faster than a comparable IDE setting. And SATA is hotplugable (even though I wouldn't like to replace drives in a running system).
Another nice feature is the smaller cable. You have more space in the PC and better air-circulation.

And finally to "jwarder":
I guess your problem is that you haven't got the disc formated as ext2, even though I am surprised because my 9.2 install-CDs didn't expected the disc to be ext2. Could you post a link to the readme (or whatsoever) where you got the instruction on how to create the disc ?!

Regards,
Stephan

Well to be honest im that up on linux but all i did was to format the floppy in windows and use the mkfloppy file in dos to create the floppy, can you tell me how to format the floppy using ext2, also i am using mandrake 10 not 9.2.

Cheers,
Jack

You are using mandrake 10 ??? On their web-page only 9.2 is available.
Hmmm, I am surprised. I just checked on their site. At least for a standard patch a normal MS-DOS formated floppy is okay. So I would guess that a normnal DOS dic might do.
Anyway: You can format a disc under linux with
fdformat /dev/fd0
Now it is just formated, no filesystem!
However if the disc was already formated you can skip the fdformat and go straight for the filesystem.
mke2fs /dev/fd0

However, I doubt that you got a suiteable driver. You didn't give information whch board you are using or which SATA-chipset.
The Silicon Image page doesn't provide Mandrake drivers as far as I figured out.
If it is a 3112 SuSE 9.0 might work, eve though I had problems. Kernel 2.6.x will make things better I hope.

I have a Gigaybyte K8N-PRO motherboard, and i have the 3112 silicon image controller.
Heres the links for Mandrake 10
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/100beta.php3

Okay. According to the website the new Mandrake 10 (both beta and 2) containa kernel 2.6.x.
Kernel 2.6. CAN support the Sil 3112, so I guess there should be no need for a driver Sil. Since apparently a 2.4 kernel is also provided (where only a backport exists which is not available in all distros) I guess it should be possible to choose between the two during install.

What exactly happens during your install attempts. Is your harddrive found during install? You should be offered something like /dev/sda. Or can't you boot after the install which seemed to work ?
Is your harddrive found druing starzup of the PC (that is prior to a boot attempt). If you don't get an information that the Sil 3112 found your hardrive and offers you to set it up (which is what you have to do as "stripped" drive. for each drive you install) and if you didn't put your SATA drive in the boot device list in the BIOS (where its Sil_bIOS needs to be activated too)
Since Mandrake is known for a a fairly up2date hardware detection I guess that you trouble derives from wrong BIOS settings. Ahve you tried to install windows (you need to press <F6> during install and insert the driver disc for an "third party SCSI driver"). If that doesn't work either that is a 100% proof for wrong BIOS settings.
If you should still encounter problems during setup of Mandrake which are reöated to not finding the drive, give the SuSE 9.0 a try (you can download it as well or you can buy the DVD which is included in many journals and magazines these days. If you download the latest kernel from www.kernel.org I could explain you how to setup the kernel for your system (but you need an installed system first. If all else fails use an old IDE drive. Things can be transfered to the SATA as soon as it is set up)

Good luck
Stephan