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Obsolete Releases => SME Server 7.x => Topic started by: henry44 on June 24, 2009, 06:08:21 AM

Title: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: henry44 on June 24, 2009, 06:08:21 AM

I searched the forums and the user guides, but couldn't find any info. I want to set up a server with 2 SATA hard drives and need to use a SATA controller card.

Any suggestions as to the choice of cards?

Thanks..........

Title: Re: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: Arnie on June 24, 2009, 08:10:55 AM

From my experience, any card with a Silicon Image 3114 chip should work, including motherboards with SATA onboard based on these chips.

Title: Re: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: henry44 on July 05, 2009, 05:26:35 PM

After a google search for a card with a 3114 chipset, I chose a Rosewill RC-201 PCI SATA x2 Silicon Image card (from Newegg) and it worked just fine out of the box. I did not set up anything with the card (raid or jbod). SME picked up the 2 SATA discs and completed the install flawlessly.

Title: Re: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: janet on July 07, 2009, 07:51:58 AM

henry44

Quote

I did not set up anything with the card (raid or jbod).

You usually need to specify the type of RAID in the card setup program.

Quote

SME picked up the 2 SATA discs and completed the install flawlessly.

It sounds like sme has configured software RAID, which can be achieved without needing a SATA card.
What was your purpose in needing/wanting a SATA card, did your motherboard not support SATA drives ?

what does
cat /proc/mdstat
show ?

Title: Re: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: henry44 on July 08, 2009, 04:29:47 AM

Quote from: mary on July 07, 2009, 07:51:58 AM

henry44

You usually need to specify the type of RAID in the card setup program.


It sounds like sme has configured software RAID, which can be achieved without needing a SATA card.
What was your purpose in needing/wanting a SATA card, did your motherboard not support SATA drives ?

what does
cat /proc/mdstat
show ?

For most modern SATA and PATA controller cards (and some older IBM SCSI cards) not defining a raid pack will result in the drives acting like they are connected to an on-board controller i.e. single stand-alone drives. Because the card I am using is cheap, any raid set-up would be done in software. SME does a much better job with software raid than cheap controller cards. That's why I didn't use the raid bios on the card.

I had been using SCSI drives (again letting SME do the raid controller stuff), but got tired of buying used drives from e-bay. I went with new SATA drives (10k rpm WD Raptors) and needed a controller card as my old mb doesn't support SATA.

I am not having any problems. I just wanted to be sure to get a controller card with a chipset that had drivers already in the kernel.

Why do you want to see the output of cat /proc/mdstat? It just a vanilla raid1 install with 2 SATA drives. You can probably guess what that output would be.

Title: Re: Compatible SATA controller cards
Post by: janet on July 08, 2009, 04:51:04 AM

henry44

That's fine, you really just needed the controller card aspect.