Advice on new hdd

Uncle_Psychosis · Guru Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 387

Hi guys

I'm about to buy a new HDD and am probably going to go SATA. I have an Asus A7N8X deluxe motherboard, and lspci tells me that it uses the SiI 3112 chipset for SATA. When I am installing my new drive (I am going to do a fresh Gentoo install on it) is all I need to do compile SATA support and compile the "nvidia SATA driver" into the kernel?

And can anyone recommend any good, cheap drives (~120-160Gb).

Thanks

Sam

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

Western Digital's good as are IBM/Hitachi and Maxtor. Watch out for a lot of Seagates being sold cause they aren't being covered by Seagate's new 5-year warranty policy.

fredgt · Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2005 9:33 pm Post subject:

I've got the A7N8X-E deluxe and all you need to do is compile the sata_sil as module and load it or compile it into you're kernel. It works perfectly.

This is what you'll need for the SATA controler to work.
Device Drivers -> SCSI device support -> SCSI low-level drivers -> Serial ATA (SATA) support
Device Drivers -> SCSI device support -> SCSI low-level drivers -> Silicon Image SATA support

NOTE : With SATA the device file is not a /dev/hdx but /dev/sdx

Travers · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 142

As for the hard drive, make sure you get Native Command Queing. For brands, you can't go wrong with Hitachi, or Toshiba. Seagate's 5 year warranty is really nice. Western Digital is good for cheap drives. Maxtor is like soviet weapons: cheap, plentiful, and they blow up in your face alot. (I know someone who literally had a chip blow and smack him in the face.) I've seen 5 dead drives in my life, all Maxtors. I've also seen a few of IBM Deathstars, and they all work still. That is saying something.

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

Funny. My 13-14 yr old maxtor drive is still alive and kicking XD.

I've seen 2 seagates die and 1 WD, and I've encountered 5 seagates and 8-10 WDs. I have an IBM and it's a wonderful powerhouse that hasn't failed even though my seagate drive bit the dust within the first week that I got it back from being RMA'ed (hence my warning).

Gentree · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 7:05 pm Post subject:

If you want a quiet life (as in dB) I recommend Seagate Barracudas
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Travers · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Oct 2004 Posts: 142

Anything with a HFB will be pretty silent. (Hydraulic fluid bearing.) Just don't freeze one of these and then plug it in. =)

yaneurabeya · Veteran Joined: 13 May 2004 Posts: 1754 Location: Seattle

yottabit · Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 3:13 am Post subject:

I only sell Hitachi for ATA & SATA ... everything else is so much less reliable I don't even consider it.

Just telling you from experience...
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