SATA RAID controllers

[Dan Melomedman]

Beric Farmer wrote:
> Hi Dan.
> 
> I've had experience with the HighPoint RocketRAID 1520 (SATA) and the 
> Promise TX2 (ATA133).
> 
> First, in terms of reliability and function, I've not had any 
> problems with either to date.  However, I find the transfer rates of 
> both of them to be less than I would expect.

>From the responses I've received so far NetBSD people had terrible
experience with the Promise controllers, presumably until they fixed it
in the new firmware. Anyway, I shelled out for the Escalade controller
which should be well-supported by any BSD and of course Linux,
and also quite fast (real hardware RAID, presumably not just a BIOS
to boot a software RAID volume like the other controllers). I still
doubt this array will have the speed of my 10K RPM SCSI mirror, but
should be close enough. It's a shame for this price it doesn't have
cache. There is an interesting SATA vs. SCSI benchmark shootout at
tomshardware.com.