Re: Recommended pci-e 1x SATA cards.

[Roman Mamedov <rm@romanrm.ru>]

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On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:31:08 -0500
Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:

> The overall Newegg rating for the Syba card you deride is 4/5 eggs

I am not deriding anything... but from the way you react to it, I get a
feeling I am talking to a Silicon Image or Syba employee. :)

> across 109 reviews.  If the card was as horrible as you make it out to
> be, the rating would be 1/5 not 4/5, and people would stop buying it.

What is the probability most simply won't notice it? Or they don't use 2 disks
on this card, or don't use them both at full speed. Also I agree that most
likely the bug isn't present on 100% of boards, if you remember the initial
reporter (in Russia) had the problem only on 2 boards of 5 identical ones he
bought.

> Note that the user who posted the read corruption issue referred to a
> single application in Windows 7 where this error occurred, TeraCopy.
> It's far more likely he was up against an application or driver issue
> than a hardware issue with the Syba card.  He did not state whether a
> Windows Explorer copy would also cause the problem, nor xcopy, nor
> Robocopy, etc.

Yes, and still, this is an extremely valuable report. The problem described is
exactly the same what was reported on previous two occasions: "two ports used
at full speed => silent corruption in files". And now we know the problem is
not limited to the Linux driver, it also appears in Windows 7. But waving it
off as "just a bug in TeraCopy" or whatever, against two previous
confirmations of exactly this type of corruption on exactly this hardware (the
3132 controller) in the same circumstances, seems unreasonable to me.

> BTW, did you even read the BackBlaze blog I posted?  They run hundreds
> of this exact Syba 3132 card, with Linux, with mdraid, and have reported
> zero problems.  And they're using a 5:1 PMP on each 3132 port.  If these
> cards, or the 3132 were junk, as you state, surely BackBlaze would have
> run into problems in 2+ years of full production, no?

Again, can you quote where I used the word "junk"...
Regarding the Backblaze blog - yes, I read it. Dunno - did they post any
follow-up if they had to replace some cards? Would they even publish something
like that? Would they actually pinpoint some mysterious corruptions now and
then to the controller card? Also if we're talking a hardware bug here(and I
think we do) -- maybe it doesn't surface when PMPs are used instead of disks
directly? Or maybe it doesn't happen with the server-grade Intel motherboard
(which AFAIR they use), but only when the card is combined with PCI-E
implementation of more common chipsets?

> Again, you're taking isolated incidents and assuming they are the norm,
> when they most certainly are not.

"Significant percentage of 3132 cards" is enough to me. Where I'd define
"significant" even as 0.01% of cards. But actually it is likely to be more
widespread than that, given this exact problem was already reported by 3
people on 3 continents with 2 different OSes and 4 controller boards,
including a brand-name one. If this is not a wide sampling, I don't know what
is...

-- 
With respect,
Roman

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