Re: Recommended SATA controller?

[Stefan Smietanowski <stesmi@stesmi.com>]

Stefan Smietanowski wrote:

> Arve Knudsen wrote:
> 
>> Hi
>>
>> As it seems the Silicon Image driver won't be radically improved 
>> anytime soon(?), I'm thinking of purchasing a dedicated SATA 
>> controller. Can anyone recommend me a fairly cheap 2-port controller 
>> that's known to work well with Linux (2.6-series)? Stability is 
>> imperative, I just had a solid freeze and I'm afraid it might have to 
>> do with disk activity (playing MP3s while compiling). Might Promise 
>> (Ultra 150) or Adaptect (1210 SA) be worth considering?
> 
> 
> I sent a list the other day about my harddrives dieing on me and after
> following up my search I came across that there is some kind of either
> driver or hardware error on the VIA 8237 controller's SATA part, but
> ONLY if you run it in "DISK" mode. It works fine in "RAID" mode.
> 
> I can't give you specifics on what works or doesn't as I've only tried
> 2.4 so far but the promise one seems to work fine for me in 2.4 right
> now.
> 
> So stay away from the 8237 in case you decide to get a motherboard with
> SATA on instead (not much more expensive really than getting a seperate
> SATA PCI card.

Specifically three identical hard drives died on me in case you missed
the email, all in the same way. Low level formatting them cured two
but not the third. It is being RMA'd as we speak.

The problem is not only with Maxtor harddrives (as it was with me) but
with all brands. Drives that have died that I have read about are
WD, Maxtor and Seagate. I can't remember if Hitachi was on the list or
not but I wouldn't touch Hitachi (ex-IBM) with a 10 foot pole so that's
why I don't remember. Many people have seen the same problem as I did.
Some could use powermax to lowlevel the drive and some couldn't.
Using a different controller with the lowlevel formatted drive seems
to work for others as it does for me.

// Stefan