Well the Silicon Image controller is quite usable with kernels from 2.4.22 and up, since the chipset driver in the previous versions was broken, problem is that in order for it to be rock solid you'd have to patch the kernel with a custom Silicon Image Medley Software RAID driver (the reason for this eludes me). In any case, you should visit the Intel page and try to see if there are any improvements/new drivers for your selected platform. In any case, in my opinon a kernel upgrade to 2.4.22+ is mandatory. So you should as well be contemplating the possiblity to re-compile or compile a new kernel.

I have been unable to get my p4p800 mobo to work in enhanced mode with my SATA drive. Hope you have better luck and can post how you got it working here.

hi all

i have a wd-raptor SATA drive. i installed mandrake 9.1. it partitioned and installed without problem but hangs on bootup.

any ideas, suggestions????

thanks.

What's really important regarding SATA is the chipset you are using... so please what chipset do you have?

So I built these awesome workstations:

Dual opterons running on the tyan k8w s2885 motherboard. It has a silicon image 3114 raid controller, running 2 raptor 36GB SATA drives.

I have tried installing every new Linux distro I can get on it and nothing recognizes the disks. One way or another they all tell me they can't find the hard disks at all. ( Red Hat 9, Mandrake 9.2, Suse 9.0, Red Hat GinGin etc. etc. )

I know the hardware works because I installed Windows XP on it and everything works flawlessly - and is really fast.

So my question is, does any Linux distro support the Silicon Image 3114 raid controller?

Just thought I would post an update since it's been a while for me:

Just installed a fresh copy of Mandrake 9.2 (with the default kernel 2.4.22) and the SATA support works out of the box:

[root@localhost root]# hdparm -i /dev/hde

/dev/hde:

Model=ST3120023AS, FwRev=3.01, SerialNo=3KA1FB98
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=234441648
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2:

* signifies the current active mode


******************
[root@localhost root]# hdparm -t -T /dev/hde

/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 2860 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1430.00 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 108 MB in 3.02 seconds = 35.76 MB/sec


**********
Good enough for out of the box! Now I am heading off to tweak this properly!

-Aaron

The problem here is the chipset. Ofcourse there are drivers fro Windows for the new chipset, but I won't be holding my breath for support for this chipset in Linux anytime soon when just a few weeks ago support for the 3112 was apparently complete

same problem here... trying to install linux over 2 raptors in raid 0 on a K8W but no luck w/the sata raid drivers... or the siI3114 at all.... can't even find the drives to do softraid... anyone out there have a solution... (especially if you use gentoo

Is there any SATA card out there with healthy linux support? I didn't read all 120+ messages here.
I would like to build a hardware RAID-5 with SATA drives for RH9. Is it possible as of today? Thx.

Let me add my 2 cents on this topic. I just got Redhat 9 installed on my SATA RAID system. It works great. I'll try to use all the important keywords to trigger Google like Serial ATA (SATA), RAID, etc.

Here's my setup: Asus A7N8X Deluxe mobo with Silicon Image Sil 3112A Controller. I've got 2 Seagate 80 gig SATA drives connected in RAID striping. I installed XP (not exactly trivial either!) and it sees the drives as 1 160 gig drive as it should. I did the required Partition Magic partitioning to prepare the system for Linux.

Now comes the fun part. For the Sil 3112A chipset, you have to get Silicon Image's driver (which, unfortunately is not open source and is designed only for certain distros). This driver is on their website, though you'd never know it. ( http://www.siimage.com/home.asp ) It is a terrible page. You have to go to the products tab, then storage, then product support, then in the left panel select Serial ATA/controllers and select your chipset. (I'd provide the full link but I suspect it's dynamic and will change.)

The Linux driver support is there as well as instructions. You have to follow all the instructions in the full instructions readme file. Especially the part about making a boot disc for the first boot. IT WON'T WORK UNLESS YOU MAKE THE BOOT DISC and run it with the noprobe commands. Once you've got a prompt, you can execute their script to change GRUB permanently so that it loads normally from then on. I've got both OSs running fast and solid now.

I've received a lot of help from forums like this over the years so I figure it's time to give something back. Hope this helps someone.

Hi ALL!

I've read a lot of posts on this topic and it seems that the only thing that should work is to try to install those Medley-drivers

My HW:
Asus A7N8-Deluxe with SiliconImage 3112A onboard
2x Seagate 160GB SATA disks
Currently WindowsXP on a current RAID0 partition (300GB formatted)

I'm trying to install Mandrake 9.2 on that RAID0 partition
The same old problem - it seems to recognize my disks fine, but only as separate disks.

Now, I'm currently a Linux-newbee and not exactly sure how to load these Medley-drivers....
I tried to switch into another terminal while installation rutine asked me for drive-partitioning and then to access my floppy, but I couldn't even do that - it seemed like it wasn't even mounted....

Anyway - I would really appreciate if someone could give me a more detalied walkthrough for dummies on how to load these Medley modules into the kernel! Help me on fighting windoze! :-)

My box is a a7n8x dx, two raptors raid0 mounted /, Promise 20268 ATA100 controller, 120g Western Digital WD1200BB drive mounted on /mnt/backup on gentoo linux. I am running 2.6.0-test11 and it works great. I had 2.4.21 with a ac parch and it worked well but, 2.6.0test10 and newer adds ata133 on the nforce2 controller.
I will test a Tyan k8w s2885 rig soon. When i test the Tyan k8w s2885 rig I will post what I find here. and on www.linuxmall.us.

great! let us know what you find... I noticed on silicon image's website, there are 64 bit beta linux drivers available. Problem is, they are the prepacked type limited to redhat 7.3,8.0,9, united linux, and suse 8.1,8.2.

i don't think there is kernel support, 2.4 ro 2.6, for the sata chip (siI3114) on this board yet. i may be wrong though...

sorry for any mixup

Has this thread been closed or just moved somewhere else ?