| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
lat3ncy
n00b
Joined: 17 Sep 2003
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, UK
|
 Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:00 pm Post subject: how well supported is serial ata? |
 |
|
as question.
After getting a new job after 9 months in unnemployed hell I'm going to get the long overdue hard disk upgrade I need! 
My mainboard is an old asus a7v-133c and currently handles two nearly full hard disks (40+80GB) and two cd drives. So an addition drive needs a new controller. I thought maybe I should get myself a serial ata controller and a 120GB s-ata hard disk but before I spend the money. how easy would it be to get this working under linux? |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
brain
Apprentice
Joined: 16 May 2002
Posts: 229
Location: Farmington Hills, MI
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:20 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Apparently support under 2.6 is farily good from what I hear.
I'm still having trouble getting Gentoo on my G5 w/serial-ATA, but I think that's a whole other can of worms...
_________________
--brain |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
agent_jdh
Veteran
Joined: 08 Aug 2002
Posts: 1783
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Here's an interesting link-
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1787
Some SATA controllers are not as equal as others. In fact, some of them can barely be called SATA controllers, they're just PATA controllers in disguise. Like the Silicon Image 3112 on my mobo. Which is really annoying.
The Promise controllers look OK.
There's no SATA RAID support in 2.6 yet afaik.
_________________
Jingle Jangle Jewellery |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
PermaNoob
n00b
Joined: 23 Jan 2004
Posts: 60
Location: Galveston, Texas
|
| Posted: Thu Feb 26, 2004 11:12 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| My Promise Sata150 has been perfect since I installed it a few months ago (kernel 2.6.x). Piece of cake to configure... can't say the same for my Siig 3112 tho. I gave up on that one. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
malloc
l33t
Joined: 19 Sep 2003
Posts: 762
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 1:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| I hava a 3112 SiImage on my asus mb and it's working great with both my Seagate SATA drives. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
lat3ncy
n00b
Joined: 17 Sep 2003
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, UK
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
I've seen the promise sata 150-tx2 for sale but it's a little more expensive than I would like to spend. It's nearly as much as the hard disk I want to attach to it!
I've found a place that does a silicon image controller at nearer my budget. It also appears to supply linux drivers with it which is a good sign. I want to use Seagate hard drives as my other two are Seagates and I have never had any issues and have been very happy with their reliability and performance. Thanks for all your help so far. I shall take the plunge soon!  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
agent_jdh
Veteran
Joined: 08 Aug 2002
Posts: 1783
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 2:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| lat3ncy wrote: | I've seen the promise sata 150-tx2 for sale but it's a little more expensive than I would like to spend. It's nearly as much as the hard disk I want to attach to it!
I've found a place that does a silicon image controller at nearer my budget. It also appears to supply linux drivers with it which is a good sign. I want to use Seagate hard drives as my other two are Seagates and I have never had any issues and have been very happy with their reliability and performance. Thanks for all your help so far. I shall take the plunge soon! |
Don't use the drivers that come with the card, compile the kernel drivers into the kernel instead.
The Silicon Image card will work OK, but ask yourself one thing - why not just buy a PATA drive and not bother with SATA? It won't be much slower, especially if you use the SI controller which doesn't support TCQ (unlike the Promise - that's why it costs a bit more, it's a proper SATA interface). Unless you have a pressing need to use SATA drives/cables or are planning on hot-swapping them (the SI controller does support this SATA function). A modern PATA drive will probably perform just as quickly, assuming that mobo of yours support UDMA-100.
_________________
Jingle Jangle Jewellery |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Rumil
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 08 Dec 2003
Posts: 108
Location: Krakow, Poland
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 9:29 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| agent_jdh wrote: |
Don't use the drivers that come with the card, compile the kernel drivers into the kernel instead.
The Silicon Image card will work OK, but ask yourself one thing - why not just buy a PATA drive and not bother with SATA? It won't be much slower, especially if you use the SI controller which doesn't support TCQ (unlike the Promise - that's why it costs a bit more, it's a proper SATA interface). Unless you have a pressing need to use SATA drives/cables or are planning on hot-swapping them (the SI controller does support this SATA function). A modern PATA drive will probably perform just as quickly, assuming that mobo of yours support UDMA-100. |
Could you tell me what is TCQ?
Anyway I own Abit NF7-S which has built-in si3112 and must say that I had some problems with it (including data-loss -> after setting Unmask IRQ on I've lost my partition table and couldn't repair it). I've also heard about people having data corruption with this controller. And I think that Seagate SATA drives on this controller (in Linux) is more like workaround then real support. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
agent_jdh
Veteran
Joined: 08 Aug 2002
Posts: 1783
Location: Scotland
|
| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 10:39 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Rumil wrote: | | agent_jdh wrote: |
Don't use the drivers that come with the card, compile the kernel drivers into the kernel instead.
The Silicon Image card will work OK, but ask yourself one thing - why not just buy a PATA drive and not bother with SATA? It won't be much slower, especially if you use the SI controller which doesn't support TCQ (unlike the Promise - that's why it costs a bit more, it's a proper SATA interface). Unless you have a pressing need to use SATA drives/cables or are planning on hot-swapping them (the SI controller does support this SATA function). A modern PATA drive will probably perform just as quickly, assuming that mobo of yours support UDMA-100. |
Could you tell me what is TCQ?
Anyway I own Abit NF7-S which has built-in si3112 and must say that I had some problems with it (including data-loss -> after setting Unmask IRQ on I've lost my partition table and couldn't repair it). I've also heard about people having data corruption with this controller. And I think that Seagate SATA drives on this controller (in Linux) is more like workaround then real support. |
TCQ is tagged command queuing and it's traditionally been a SCSI thing. Basically the I/O controller keeps a list of command requests from the OS - it can then intelligently re-order the command sequence issued to the drive to give best performance. The aim is to try and reduce the number of seeks the drive head has to make across the disk surface.
There are a few other improvements that SATA brings, but for your average desktop/workstation user, the performance increase that TCQ brings is the most important. A SATA 150 controller that does not support TCQ probably will not perform any better than a PATA 133 controller, or even one that runs at 100. Especially if you get an HDD with 2MB cache - the newer drives with 8MB cache take more advantage of the extra available bandwidth, but how much you would notice this in real life is debatable. The extra bandwidth of SATA comes into play more in RAID 0 arrays.
_________________
Jingle Jangle Jewellery |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
lat3ncy
n00b
Joined: 17 Sep 2003
Posts: 30
Location: Manchester, UK
|
| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:15 am Post subject: |
|
|
| The only reason I would choose SATA over PATA is that SATA is the future. My system is an evolutionary thing. I don't scrap it and start again so future-proofing is my motive behind upgrading to SATA. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Kernel & Hardware
