SATA on FreeBSD-4.x

[Rumen Telbizov]

On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 09:30:09PM +0200, Bj?rn K?nig wrote:
> 
> > Dan Strick wrote:
> >
> > It is good that there seems to be a PCI SATA card
> > that seems to work well in FreeBSD-stable.
> 
> I use also a HighPoint SATA controller (HPT372) with FreeBSD 4.9. There were
> some issues, but now after patching kernel sources it works fine.
> 
> > Do you by any
> > chance know if the RAID mirroring function is implemented
> > in the controller or in the driver?
> 
> Probably software implemented. Highpoint is for the very low-end market. You
> should also know that the 37x are native ATA/133 chips. SATA functionality
> is covered and provided by Marvell bridge chips; one for each channel.
> That's the reason why SATA hardware works with non-SATA drivers.

I am not a RAID expert, but here are just a few thoughts:

1. My chipset is hpt374 not 372!

2. Is it acctually possible to BUILD/CONFIGURE/ETC RAID arrays
in the card's BIOS if the RAID is software implemented in the driver?
I do this while the computer is booting by entering the card's setup
thus not using the OS at all!

3. I believe that if the RAID was software I'd notice that big
file transfers would have taken more cpu time. My tests showed
insignificant cpu load when copying large files!

Anyway I still may be wrong :)
The fact is that I like this card. It has a reasonable price
and so far it is rock solid under FreeBSD 4.x.


Rumen Telbizov