On Wed, 4 Dec 2002, JUSTIN GERRY wrote: >I've been using SCSI RAID arrays for almost three years now, different >controllers, different RAID setups and I've never run across such a >poorly supported/designed product. Those were likely true hardware RAID cards. >I really wish that Promise would decide to either support Linux or not. >Don't walk the line and claim to support it but give a cold shoulder and >a half-hearted response to end users. </rant> > >I guess I'm off to try the Adaptec 2400A, looks like the source is >released for that card. > >Then again I probably should have stuck with RedHat's software based >RAID, I've had a server running that for over a year with no problems to >date. Well, technically the Promise FastTrak is nothing more than a standard IDE controller, with software RAID built into the BIOS. It is not a hardware RAID card. So, Linux drivers for this card are merely software RAID either cloning the BIOS in a Linux driver, or actually executing the BIOS code. In either case, tests between the Linux md driver software RAID and the Promise FastTrak's firmware RAID consistently show the Linux md driver to be superior in performance. The Promise hardware RAID issues aside, is a really decent IDE controller IMHO, but the Ultra series of cards are identical hareware wise and a lot cheaper. The only difference between the Ultra and the FastTrak seems to be the card's BIOS I am told. Hope this info helps. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
