SATA PCI adapter recommendation

[Mark Kirkwood]

Oliver Fromme wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I plan to put a SATA drive in an old PATA-only PC, so I'm
> looking for an appropriate adapter card.  A cheap card
> should suffice, I do not need RAID, and it does not have
> to be SATA-300.  (This machine has only standard PCI slots
> anyway, so it wouldn't be able to saturate SATA-300.)
>
> I'm currently looking at these, all of which are about
> 20 Euro around here:
>
> 1. Based on Silicon Image Sil-3x12 chip:
> http://www.digital-data.de/download/datasheets/111816_Datasheet.pdf
>
> 2. Based on Initio INIC1620 chip:
> http://www.digital-data.de/download/datasheets/111817_Datasheet.pdf
>
> 3. Some VIA chip (probably VT6421A, but not 100% clear):
> http://www.delock.de/view/pdf/70156/A/1943/
>
> I've read a few scary things about SIL chips on the lists,
> so I guess I'd better try to avoid that one.
> But how about the Initio and VIA ones?  Do they work well
> with FreeBSD?  Any good or bad experiences?
>
> Finally, a small question:  I assume that all of those
> SATA controllers do have their own BIOS, so I can boot
> from them, right?  It would be annoying to have to keep
> an old PATA disk in that box just to be able to boot.
>
>   

I'd forget those and buy a 3ware card - supported and reliable. Possibly 
a little more expensive... but they are available 2nd hand on ebay, 
which should help:

http://cgi.ebay.com/hardware-raid-card-3ware-8006-2LP-2-port-SATA-RAID_W0QQitemZ140300178432QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item140300178432&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1234|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A0|293%3A1|294%3A50

regards

Mark