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linux experts - esata controller + external bay

S

Sarekai

n00b
Joined
Mar 30, 2003
Messages
32
Can anyone help me out with the following:

I need to add storage to my linux workstation. Since my case is pretty small, I wanted to get an external storage bay (4 or 5 drive bays) and an esata pci-e controller and setup a big pool of storage. For now, I am not wanting to spend a ton of money for true hardware raid (thinking 3ware etc) and wanted to use native linux tools (mdam?) to manage the array.

I am running into a lot of conflicting information though about driver compatibility, AHCI, port multipliers etc. I am using this site to help me out: https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Hardware,_driver_status

Can anyone recommend a good PCI-E Esata controller, preferably, one that uses AHCI (from what I am reading it's a nice open spec fully supported in linux). So doing some digging I found this card:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/
Which looks great - except it doesn't support port multipliers. OK - do I need a port multiplier? Most of the case enclosures I've found seem to have them?

So then looking at the Sansdigital enclosures - they seem to recommend controllers based on the SIL3124 chipset - which the ata wiki say's is a good spec AND supports PM.

So, does AHCI not support PM? Is the SIL3124 a good chipset under linux that doesn't require some binary driver or other crappiness to work?

My overall goals are the following:
Big pool of raided storage under linux (EXT3 perhaps, raid 5)
Decent transfer speeds (want to serve/move media off this box)
hot swap drives if one dies
possible to avoid drivers shenanigans (ie good linux support)


Just starting to dig into this so pardon any mistakes.
 
As far as I know the SIL3124 is supported natively under Linux and works fairly well. Just hit eBay and find an eSATA controller that is based on the SIL3124. As far as I remember, Silicon Image created the SATA port multiplier technology, so the controller should support it anyway

As for the external enclosure, you have your eye on Sans Digital, but take a look here at the E4 - PM model.
 
parityOCP said:
As far as I know the SIL3124 is supported natively under Linux and works fairly well. Just hit eBay and find an eSATA controller that is based on the SIL3124. As far as I remember, Silicon Image created the SATA port multiplier technology, so the controller should support it anyway

As for the external enclosure, you have your eye on Sans Digital, but take a look here at the E4 - PM model.
Click to expand...

Cool - thanks for the info. From what I've read the SiI3124 is well supported - including hotswapping etc. That enclosure looks really nice too.
 
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