On 14/04/2011 8:54 PM, Roman Mamedov wrote:
On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:31:26 +1000
Steven Haigh<netwiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm looking at adding a couple of SATA ports to my home server and
figure its probably better to get a 1x pci-e card instead of using the
PCI bus.
Has anyone got any recommendations on cheap pci-e SATA cards that work
well with linux?
Any comments on these?
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PCI-E-PCIE-RAID-Express-Card-SATA-II-Controller-A24-/220762966195?pt=AU_Computer_Components_Controller_Cards&hash=item33667f88b3
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PCI-E-PCIE-RAID-Express-Card-2-SATA-II-2-eSATA-A25-/300543913241?pt=AU_Components&hash=item45f9d02d19
This is a jMicron adapter - but I haven't heard much good or bad about them.
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/PCI-E-PCIE-Express-Card-2-SATA-RAID-II-Controller-/260745100434?pt=AU_Computer_Components_Controller_Cards&hash=item3cb59e7c92
Any others that people recommend?
JMicron is okay, it's an AHCI compatible controller, so does not even require
its own driver module, it just uses 'ahci'. Keep in mind that it is not a
PCI-E 2.0 device, and the transfer speed will be limited to 250 MB/sec over
both ports (and because of various overheads, something closer to 200 MB/sec).
A couple of modern disks can easily reach and become limited by that.
Hmmm - this might be an idea... I have two 1x slots on the mainboard -
and I have 8 x hotswap bays. The current setup has 5 drives (2 x 80Gb
RAID1, 3 x 1Tb RAID5) plus one eSATA drive off the mainboard. Speed is
great, but I can't see myself getting more than 8 drives in this unit -
ever.
I suggest that you avoid Silicon Image 3132, they have data corruption issue
(on some board designs?), triggered or amplified by transferring via both
ports at the same time, at full speed.
Thanks for the pointer!
If you can spend a bit more, try finding a controller based on Marvell 9123,
which is a 2-port SATA3 chip for PCI-E 2.0. For example "ASRock SATA3 Card"
which is sold separately (from motherboards) for about $33.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=ASRock%20SATA3%20Card
The only downside of that device, is that it doesn't seem to be compatible
with PCI-E 1.0, it is 1.1/2.0 only, so will not work on many old motherboards.
Hmmm - I tried looking for these anywhere in Australia and came up
empty. ebay is probably my preferred source for any card - as a lot of
the time stuff like this is just not available in Australia at any kind
of decent cost.
--
Steven Haigh
Email: netwiz@xxxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.crc.id.au
Phone: (03) 9001 6090 - 0412 935 897
Fax: (03) 8338 0299
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are
forced by circumstances to meet. -- Admiral William Halsey
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
