SATA chipset recomendations

SATA chipset recomendations

[chris]

I want to setup a Linux software RAID 1 / Mirror array in the 2.6 kernel.  I 
am looking for feedback regarding the best supported SATA chipsets.  Do any 
of these cards stick out as having better driver support?  Can you reccommend 
another card I have not mentioned?

(I am not wanting to spend the big bucks on hardware RAID, so I am not much 
interested the expensive 3Ware or Adaptec cards)

Promise SATA150 TX4 ~ $65
(I don't really need 4 ports, but, I would not mind having them for future 
use)

Highpoint Rocket 1520 ~ $35

Silicon Image Based Chipsets:
SIIG SC-SAT212 ~ $40
LSI MegaRAID SATA 150-2 ~ $35
Buslink PCI-2S ~ $30
Koutech PSA150 ~ $25
Kingwin SAC-02 ~ $20

I thank you for your time,
-chris

Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[John Lange]

There is only one place to go for current SATA answers:

http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

John

On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 20:12, chris wrote:
> I want to setup a Linux software RAID 1 / Mirror array in the 2.6 kernel.  I 
> am looking for feedback regarding the best supported SATA chipsets.  Do any 
> of these cards stick out as having better driver support?  Can you reccommend 
> another card I have not mentioned?
> 
> (I am not wanting to spend the big bucks on hardware RAID, so I am not much 
> interested the expensive 3Ware or Adaptec cards)
> 
> Promise SATA150 TX4 ~ $65
> (I don't really need 4 ports, but, I would not mind having them for future 
> use)
> 
> Highpoint Rocket 1520 ~ $35
> 
> Silicon Image Based Chipsets:
> SIIG SC-SAT212 ~ $40
> LSI MegaRAID SATA 150-2 ~ $35
> Buslink PCI-2S ~ $30
> Koutech PSA150 ~ $25
> Kingwin SAC-02 ~ $20
> 
> I thank you for your time,
> -chris
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Måns Rullgård]

chris <linux_mail@rozpooh.com> writes:

> I want to setup a Linux software RAID 1 / Mirror array in the 2.6
> kernel.  I am looking for feedback regarding the best supported SATA
> chipsets.  Do any of these cards stick out as having better driver
> support?  Can you reccommend another card I have not mentioned?
>
> (I am not wanting to spend the big bucks on hardware RAID, so I am not much 
> interested the expensive 3Ware or Adaptec cards)
>
> Promise SATA150 TX4 ~ $65
> (I don't really need 4 ports, but, I would not mind having them for future 
> use)
>
> Highpoint Rocket 1520 ~ $35

I'm using a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 without any problems.  There
have been reports on this list from others having strange problems
with Rocket 1540 (no fakeraid) cards.  FWIW, my card is in a slightly
aging Alpha machine, which means that the BIOS on the card is pretty
much ignored.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[David Greaves]

TMTOWTDI

and
   http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-ide&m=108422797301151&w=2
is probably as close to the horses mouth as it gets ;)

David

John Lange wrote:

>There is only one place to go for current SATA answers:
>
>http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html
>
>John
>
>On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 20:12, chris wrote:
>  
>
>>I want to setup a Linux software RAID 1 / Mirror array in the 2.6 kernel.  I 
>>am looking for feedback regarding the best supported SATA chipsets.  Do any 
>>of these cards stick out as having better driver support?  Can you reccommend 
>>another card I have not mentioned?
>>
>>(I am not wanting to spend the big bucks on hardware RAID, so I am not much 
>>interested the expensive 3Ware or Adaptec cards)
>>
>>Promise SATA150 TX4 ~ $65
>>(I don't really need 4 ports, but, I would not mind having them for future 
>>use)
>>
>>Highpoint Rocket 1520 ~ $35
>>
>>Silicon Image Based Chipsets:
>>SIIG SC-SAT212 ~ $40
>>LSI MegaRAID SATA 150-2 ~ $35
>>Buslink PCI-2S ~ $30
>>Koutech PSA150 ~ $25
>>Kingwin SAC-02 ~ $20
>>
>>I thank you for your time,
>>-chris
>>-
>>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
>>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>>    
>>
>
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
>the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
>More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
>  
>

Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Brad Campbell]

chris wrote:
> I want to setup a Linux software RAID 1 / Mirror array in the 2.6 kernel.  I 
> am looking for feedback regarding the best supported SATA chipsets.  Do any 
> of these cards stick out as having better driver support?  Can you reccommend 
> another card I have not mentioned?
> 
> (I am not wanting to spend the big bucks on hardware RAID, so I am not much 
> interested the expensive 3Ware or Adaptec cards)
> 
> Promise SATA150 TX4 ~ $65
> (I don't really need 4 ports, but, I would not mind having them for future 
> use)

I have 3 of these in my server. They are great and I believe Promise supports Jeff with Specs and 
Hardware. Support those that support linux!

I used them to replace 2 Highpoint RocketRaid 1540's which worked ok with the Highpoint supplied 2.4 
driver but were flaky and limited to about 15MB/s under all 2.4 and 2.6 native drivers that I tried.

My ASUS A7V600 has onboard 2 Channel VIA SATA raid (with the BIOS disabled) and libata runs that 
well too.

I also have a Cardbus SIL-3112 based card which works ok also.

I have to say I it's my belief that the Promise cards appear to be the best supported natively. They 
would be my bet anyway. With 1 SATA150 and 3 drives I can max out the PCI bus easily, with 3 cards 
and 10 drives it's out of the park.

Regards,
Brad

Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Nick Maynard]

Måns Rullgård wrote:
> I'm using a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 without any problems.  There
> have been reports on this list from others having strange problems
> with Rocket 1540 (no fakeraid) cards.  <snip>
Yup - that was me.  The basic Rocket (not RocketRAID) 1540 card gave me /very/
serious problems with Linux.  Really - don't play with it.  I managed to get
mine RMA'd, but... blech.

The Promise TX4 SATA150, on the other hand, has been nothing but a pleasure to
work with.  It's been recommended by many on this list in the past, and I will
now recommend it to you.  Yes, it's more expensive, but you get what you pay
for.

Cheers,

--

Nick Maynard
nick.maynard@alumni.doc.ic.ac.uk
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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[David Greaves]

Nick Maynard wrote:

>Måns Rullgård wrote:
>  
>
>>I'm using a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 without any problems.  There
>>have been reports on this list from others having strange problems
>>with Rocket 1540 (no fakeraid) cards.  <snip>
>>    
>>
>Yup - that was me.  The basic Rocket (not RocketRAID) 1540 card gave me /very/
>serious problems with Linux.  Really - don't play with it.  I managed to get
>mine RMA'd, but... blech.
>
>The Promise TX4 SATA150, on the other hand, has been nothing but a pleasure to
>work with.  It's been recommended by many on this list in the past, and I will
>now recommend it to you.  Yes, it's more expensive, but you get what you pay
>for.
>  
>
I have one too - fairly happy (just having some raid5 resync issues but 
I'm doing some diagnostics and I doubt it's the card) :)

I have wondered whether I'd have been better off with 2x Promise TX2s?
I don't know where the bottleneck is with 4xSATA disks on a single 
Promise/PCI slot
Or is it a single pci bus in which case the TX4 is fine?

David

>Cheers,
>
>--
>
>Nick Maynard
>nick.maynard@alumni.doc.ic.ac.uk
>  
>
You too :)
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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Måns Rullgård]

David Greaves <david@dgreaves.com> writes:

> Nick Maynard wrote:
>
>>Måns Rullgård wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm using a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 without any problems.  There
>>>have been reports on this list from others having strange problems
>>>with Rocket 1540 (no fakeraid) cards.  <snip>
>>>
>>>
>>Yup - that was me.  The basic Rocket (not RocketRAID) 1540 card gave
>>me /very/ serious problems with Linux.  Really - don't play with it.
>>I managed to get mine RMA'd, but... blech.
>>
>>The Promise TX4 SATA150, on the other hand, has been nothing but a
>>pleasure to work with.  It's been recommended by many on this list
>>in the past, and I will now recommend it to you.  Yes, it's more
>>expensive, but you get what you pay for.
>>
>>
> I have one too - fairly happy (just having some raid5 resync issues
> but I'm doing some diagnostics and I doubt it's the card) :)
>
> I have wondered whether I'd have been better off with 2x Promise TX2s?
> I don't know where the bottleneck is with 4xSATA disks on a single
> Promise/PCI slot
> Or is it a single pci bus in which case the TX4 is fine?

For PCI transfers all cards share the same bus, so one or two cards
should give the same total bandwidth.

The reason I stay away from Promise cards is that I only got trouble
when I bought an UltraTX2 aka pdc20268 in the days when it was new and
hot.  It just would not work any faster than ata-33 without getting
numerous crc errors.  Maybe it wasn't compatible with the Alpha
machine, I don't know.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se

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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Lars Gaarden]

Nick Maynard wrote:
> Måns Rullgård wrote:
> 
>>I'm using a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 without any problems.  There
>>have been reports on this list from others having strange problems
>>with Rocket 1540 (no fakeraid) cards.  <snip>
> 
> Yup - that was me.  The basic Rocket (not RocketRAID) 1540 card gave me /very/
> serious problems with Linux.  Really - don't play with it.  I managed to get
> mine RMA'd, but... blech.

Ditto. I didn't RMA my Rocket 1540. The only way I can make it work 
properly
is to use a 2.4.x kernel, the hpt 'open source' driver and connect the 
drive(s)
to the controller after the POST has finished.

-- 
LarsG
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Re: SATA chipset recomendations

[Marc Bevand]

David Greaves wrote:
> I have wondered whether I'd have been better off with 2x Promise TX2s?
> I don't know where the bottleneck is with 4xSATA disks on a single 
> Promise/PCI slot

I have 4 x Seagate 160GB SATA connected on a Promise SATA150 TX4. The
bottleneck is always the PCI bus:

  o 66 MHz PCI bus (266 MB/s): I reach 209 MB/s (79% of theoretical bandwidth)
  o 33 MHz PCI bus (133 MB/s): I reach 100 MB/s (75% of theoretical bandwidth)

Note: each disk is able to generate a datas rate of about 57 MB/s.

-- 
Marc Bevand                          http://www.epita.fr/~bevand_m
Computer Science School EPITA - System, Network and Security Dept.