Promise PDC20378 Raid Accelerator

Promise PDC20378 Raid Accelerator

[Michael De Nil]

Hello everyone,

While googl'ing around on linux-support for the Promise PDC20378 Raid
Accelerator, I found some contrary messages...

- Tyan tells me that Promise only provides closed source modules for the
latest RH & Suse kernels. They also told me that there is no way to use
sata raid under linux when not using standard rh or suse kernel.

- On http://www.busybox.net/pdc-ultra-1.00.0.10.tgz, there seems to be
a free driver by Promise.

- Then, on http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html I read:
Promise FastTrak SATA150, SATA150 TX2, SATA150 TX2plus, SATA150 TX4,
SATA150 SX4, SATA378, and Ultra 618 series (e.g., PDC20621, PDC20275,
PDC20618, PDC20318, PDC20319, PDC20375, PDC20378, and PDC20376 chips) ?
the sata_promise driver in Jeff Garzik's libata driver set provides
beta-level support a/o 2004-02-25 (included in kernel 2.6.x). Alleged RAID
is proprietary software RAID: Proprietary drivers from the manufacturer
are available, as are instructions. An now-unmaintained 2003-02 i386
binary driver from the manufacturer (often claimed in error to be open
source; people being fooled by its source-code wrapper) is also available.

- ...


Can someone tell me if I will be able to run 2 SATA discs on a raid1 with
this chip, and if yes, what driver you would prefer? I am a litle bit
afraid for using non-stable drivers... ;)


Thanks

Michael De Nil

Re: Promise PDC20378 Raid Accelerator

[Jeff Garzik]

Michael De Nil wrote:
> Can someone tell me if I will be able to run 2 SATA discs on a raid1 with
> this chip, and if yes, what driver you would prefer? I am a litle bit
> afraid for using non-stable drivers... ;)


The all-open-source solution...  Linux "md" raid, and Linux SATA drivers :)

	Jeff

Re: Promise PDC20378 Raid Accelerator

[Jakob Oestergaard]

On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 07:24:34PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Michael De Nil wrote:
> >Can someone tell me if I will be able to run 2 SATA discs on a raid1 with
> >this chip, and if yes, what driver you would prefer? I am a litle bit
> >afraid for using non-stable drivers... ;)
> 
> 
> The all-open-source solution...  Linux "md" raid, and Linux SATA drivers :)

One caveat: you *may* have to create "one disk RAID-0" arrays of your
disks (which is equivalent to the single disk), in order to make the
SATA controller boot from the disk.  So, with two disks, you would
create two RAID-0 arrays, each containing one disk.  Silly really, but
at least I had to do this with the Promise TX4.

Other than that; Standard Linux SATA drivers + Software RAID + LVM2 is a
beautiful all-open-source solution for cheap flexible and reliable
storage  -  my mom is using that   ;)

-- 

 / jakob

Re: Promise PDC20378 Raid Accelerator

[Michael De Nil]

On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Jakob Oestergaard wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 07:24:34PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> > Michael De Nil wrote:
> > >Can someone tell me if I will be able to run 2 SATA discs on a raid1 with
> > >this chip, and if yes, what driver you would prefer? I am a litle bit
> > >afraid for using non-stable drivers... ;)
> >
> >
> > The all-open-source solution...  Linux "md" raid, and Linux SATA drivers :)
>
> One caveat: you *may* have to create "one disk RAID-0" arrays of your
> disks (which is equivalent to the single disk), in order to make the
> SATA controller boot from the disk.  So, with two disks, you would
> create two RAID-0 arrays, each containing one disk.  Silly really, but
> at least I had to do this with the Promise TX4.
>
> Other than that; Standard Linux SATA drivers + Software RAID + LVM2 is a
> beautiful all-open-source solution for cheap flexible and reliable
> storage  -  my mom is using that   ;)
>

Thanks for the tip Jakob!

Can someone tell me if there is yet any support for hot swapping the sata
drives?


Thanks

michael