On 8/1/2012 8:27 PM, Adam Goryachev wrote: > On a related note, is there a specific model card you would suggest that > fits the following: > a) 4 or 8 ports > b) PCI (for older systems) > c) affordable (note, not cheap, but not expensive) > d) does not need to support RAID since we will use software raid anyway If you're stuck with PCI I'd stick with a more recognized vendor such as Promise Tech. They still sell a 4 port PCI card. $70 USD at Newegg. > I am always unsure, and see very cheap SATA cards (around $50) and worry > as you suggest, and very expensive (around $1000), and feel that is a > waste of money for what should be a fairly simple card. A "very cheap" SATA card is a 2-port SiI 3512 based card--Syba, Rosewill, Koutech, etc-- for $15 on sale, $20 regular price, all prices USD. A $50 card with the same port count *should* hopefully be much higher quality. > Also, would you use on board controller, or prefer to always use an > external controller? Or is it worthwhile using a combination (in case of > controller failure)? Motherboard-down SATA controllers are usually fine for md/RAID as they're part of an Intel or AMD chipset, and of high quality. But this also depends on the quality of the board as well--there have been plenty of boards with good chipsets but also a buggy BIOS. Overall they're usually much better than a $20 card. In 20+ years of computing I've never had an HBA or RAID card fail on me. I've had plenty of mobos go toes up and plenty of NICs and VGA cards burn out. I have a 128MB 3-channel AMI MegaRAID 428 UW-SCSI built in 1998 that still works and an Adaptec 1542 ISA SCSI card from 1993 that still works. I've tossed piles of dead mobos over the same period. -- Stan -- 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
