Daniel Brahneborg [off-list ref] writes:

Thanks for the feedback, it's very valuable to me.

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 10:56:32PM +0100, Måns Rullgård wrote:

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Daniel Brahneborg [off-list ref] writes:

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I'd like to hear some success stories for RAID5 on Serial-ATA disks.
Which Serial-ATA card are you using?  Do you get decent performance?
Is it stable with DMA enabled?  Do you use the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel?

I know this much:

It doesn't work with Silicon Image.

What doesn't work?  There are drivers, at least in 2.6.  Raid should
care about what sort of disks you use.

When using it for normal disks e2fsck reports bad blocks all
over the disk. When used for RAID, I get corrupted data.  Not
much, maybe every second time for a file of 500MB.
This is with the IDE driver.  With the SCSI driver, my computer
completely freezes when I activate my second network card (as I
reported earlier, unfortunately still without a solution).
RAID might work with that driver, but unless the network card
problem is solved, that doesn't help me.

That sounds rather odd.  Have you reported this to the appropriate
places?

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It doesn't work with VIA (yet, anyway).
It might work with HighPoint.

I've run RAID5 on a Highpoint RocketRAID 1540.  I used ATA disks with
SATA converters, though.  Works with both 2.4 and 2.6.

Sounds good to hear.  It's the second cheapest card for me.

Beware that several people have reported some rather strange problems
with the Highpoint cards.  You should get a deal to take it back if it
doesn't work.

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It probably works with Promise.
I don't know if there's a driver for Adaptec.

Which Adaptec card?  The 12xx cards are fakeraid, but are supported as
normal cards.  The 24xx cards are true hardware RAID cards.  Linux
drivers exist for these, too.

It's the 12xx cards that I'm looking at. I don't want hardware
RAID, since hardware RAID5 costs an infinite amount of money.

Not really.  The Adaptec 24xx cards cost about the same as the disks
you attach to them.  I ordered one from a while ago, but the shop went
bankrupt before I got it, or at least their web site disappeared and
they stopped answering mail or phone calls.

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In case I have to replace my Silicon Image card, what should I replace
it with?  I'm currently leaning towards Promise TX4 (or TX2 if the VIA
driver is completed).

I stay as far away as I can from Promise and VIA.  Anything is usually
better than those two.

Why the warning about Promise?

I've had some bad experience with them, that's all.  They appear to be
incompatible with Alpha machines, but probably work better in PCs.

The reason I want the VIA driver to work is that I've got two VIA
connectors on the motherboard, so I only need a 2 port SATA card.

From what I've heard, VIA have improved a bit of late, but they used
to have a rather bad reputation.  I don't know anything about the
drivers, though.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@kth.se