Re: Promise SATA 150 TX2 plus

[Samuel Flory <sflory@rackable.com>]

Milan Roubal wrote:

>So what about the main advantage of SATA, that is hot-swap?
>
  Hot swap is really only in the second SATA spec.  Also hotswap is 
generally only support on scsi devices, usb devices, and raid controllers.

>Is it possible to make hotswap in the linux and change it for the
>same disk? 
>
  You used to be able to hot swap with sca scsi drives doing the following:

1)Echo some wierd command to /proc/scsi/scsi to remove the device.
2)Physically swap drives
3)Echo some wierd command to /proc/scsi/scsi to add the device.

See scsi.c 3rd, and 4th instances of the word "echo" for details.

  Of course a number of scsi raid controllers support of replacing of 
failed drives, and automagic rebuild on the new drive.  This requires a 
saf-te backplane, and a saf-te compatible raid controller. 

  In theroy you can do this on a 3ware pata, and sata controller with 
the 7.6 firmware, the 7.6 cli, and ide hotswap backplane.  Personally 
I've never tried it with a jbod drive.

>Or is it possible to change it for other disk with other
>geometry? Is it depending on SATA controller or I only need
>support in the linux kernel? Is there that support for this
>controllers/drives?
>  
>
  If might be possible if you had a controller that supported the 2nd 
sata spec, a hot swap drive carrier and used the ata-scsi driver.  Then 
the same echo trick for scsi might work.  More likely bad things would 
occur.

-- 
Once you have their hardware. Never give it back.
(The First Rule of Hardware Acquisition)
Sam Flory  <sflory@rackable.com>