True Hardware RAID
 

Are there any TRUE hardware SATA RAID cards out on the market that work with linux? I'm talking about a card where all I have to do is enter the RAID BIOS and set the array and never need a driver for the OS.

I bought a POS Promise 150 SX4 about 6 months ago and I have never been able to get the damn thing to work. I bought it because it was advertised as hardware RAID and as I found out, its hardware assisted, software RAID with damn little linux support. I would prefer a PCI card but at this point after buying 4 300GB drives to hook up to this POS and not being able to use them for 6 months I'm more than willing to take whatever I can find and work from there.

And just to let you guys know I will never buy another Promise product again, so that eliminates one companies products from your having to recommend them.

3Ware makes excellent true hardware RAID controllers. All you do is set it up in the BIOS and then boot linux. Of course you need that kernel level driver(in most distrobutions) to use it but it is relatively simple. My friend is getting one for his gaming rig. They are a bit expensive but if you can buy 4 300GB harddrives you should be ok :-)

3ware and other 'true' hardware RAID controllers uses PCI-X (PCI Extended). PCI-X is supposely to be backwards compatible with 32-bit PCI slots but not a lot manufactures include this feature on their PCI-X cards. Before buying, I suggest calling 3ware to ask them if their cards are backwards compatible with the 32-bit slot.

I also do not recommend Promise controllers. I do not recommend Silicon Image controllers too. The only cheap controller brand that I recommend is Highpoint even though they provide software RAID controllers. They work well in several OS. Promise and Silicon Image controllers are MS Windows dependent.