FreeBSD & Serial ATA

[Dominic Marks]

On Monday 02 May 2005 17:22, O'Reilly, Stuart wrote:
> %< ----------- snipped
>
> > I have good experiences with RocketRAID 1520 and 1640. I'm running a
> > 1640 with three SATA drives since one year without problems; it's just a
> > little bit slow. Highpoint offers binary FreeBSD drivers for these
> > controllers, but I think that people don't like this kind of support
> > because Highpoint neglects it for older models and this dependency might
> > be dangerous in future. Keep in mind: you'll get what you pay for.
> >
> > Regards
> > Björn
>
> Can someone just answer a quick question. One of the suggestions
> mentioned was the Highpoint RocketRAID 1520 controller which is a low
> cost solutions however support for FreeBSD stopped at v5.1.
>
> However, scrolling down the list of driver software for the RocketRAID
> 1520, Highpoint offer the option of downloading the Linux Open Source
> Driver and compiling it yourself. To quote the website:
>
> "Support Linux kernel version 2.2.x to 2.6.x on x86 and x86_64 platform."
>
> Would this be a suitable option since (as I understand it), FreeBSD is
> i386.

FreeBSD has an i386 version, but it isn't only available for i386.

See: 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/archs.html

Regarding the driver for Linux:
Often the guts of drivers distributed in this way are binary and the interface 
which brings the binary and the kernel together is all that is publicly 
accessible. You will (quite literally) have more luck getting a binary 
Windows driver to work on FreeBSD than a binary Linux driver.

> Sorry if I sound like i'm trying to get blood from a stone. ;)

Be wary of cheap controllers which burden your system with extra work instead 
of less.

> Stuart,
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HTH,
-- 
Dominic
GoodforBusiness.co.uk
I.T. Services for SMEs in the UK.