3Ware Controllers (Was: Re: Intel motherboard and SATA/RAID ...)

[Marc G. Fournier]

On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Nov 2004, Scott Gerhardt wrote:
>
>> There are only two channels so you can only have 2 drives in raid 1 or 0. 
>> Don't use 0 unless you don't care about your data.
>> You didn't specify the type of motherboard or SATA RAID chipset, but all of 
>> those onboard RAID controllers are not true hardware raid (Host raid) and 
>> require special software drivers in the OS.  You are much better off 
>> purchasing a separate hardware raid controller such as the 3Ware 8006-2LP 2 
>> port, 3Ware 9500S-4LP 4 port, Adaptec 2410SA 4-port controllers.  They do 
>> true hardware raid and work with FreeBSD.
>> 
>> Hope that answers your question.
>
> Unfortunately ... yup :)  I was hoping to avoid the extra cost, but glad to 
> have it confirmed ... thanks ...
>
> BTW, the motherboard/chassis is the Intel SR1400/SE7520JR2 ... which, 
> re-looking at the specs negates the original question anyway :)  it only 
> holds 3 drives ...
>
> Thanks though ...

Wait, now I'm a bit nervous, as this is the first time I use SATA on 
anything but a desktop ... so my experiences are limited to 'single drive' 
systems ...

The 8006-2LP ... how many drives will that support?  Just 2, right?  And 
the 9500-4LP will support 4?  So, is it one cable that goes from the 
controller card to the chassis SATA backplane?

>From reading their web site, multiple "cable" would be the MI cards, 
instead of the regular ones ... right?


----
Marc G. Fournier           Hub.Org Networking Services (http://www.hub.org)
Email: scrappy at hub.org           Yahoo!: yscrappy              ICQ: 7615664