Re: sata_mv not working with a RocketRaid 2220

[Mark Lord <liml@rtr.ca>]

Jean-Louis Dupond wrote:
> Added CC to linux-ide
> 
> -------- Originele bericht --------
> Onderwerp:     sata_mv not working with a RocketRaid 2220
> Datum:     Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:15:30 +0100
> Van:     Jean-Louis Dupond <info@dupondje.be>
> Aan:     linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> 
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to get my HighPoint RocketRaid Controller working with the 
> sata_mv drivers.
> But something is not working correctly :(
> 
> Kernel version 2.6.23.11 (also tried 2.6.24-rc5 with same results)
> Controller in lspci: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6081 8-port 
> SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 07)
> 
..

The sata_mv driver is currently not very good,
but should improve over this winter as some effort
is finally going into fixing it.

And the Highpoint RocketRAID cards are a similarly dubious choice,
as their onboard BIOS is known to corrupt filesystems before Linux
is even booted.

In particular, an "unconfigured" drive -- just plugged into a RR card
without entering the BIOS setup to configure a RAID -- gets sector 8 
overwritten by the BIOS.  This will destroy GRUB if it was installed.
And for drives which *have* been configured in the RR BIOS,
it overwrites a sector at the end of the final full GB on the drive,
for holding RR metadata.

Cheers