Cheap and cheer full SATA controller

[Stefan Schulz]

Hello folks,

I'm still happily rocking on the (K)ubuntu 10.10 Maverick release (but
can upgrade if necessary). I need to get a 1TB SATA drive into one of
the the older systems which does not have native SATA support and
looking for a cheap controller. Nothing fancy.
Currently looking at a a three port SATA (plus IDE which I don't need)
on a VIA VT6421A controller at around $20. Google has good and bad
reports of that chipset on Linux with the more recent once looking ok. I
don't need RAID and or boot capability.

Any suggestions from real life users of this thing? OR similar cards?
--
Kind regards

Stefan Schulz



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[Volker Kuhlmann]

Post by Stefan Schulz
Currently looking at a a three port SATA (plus IDE which I don't
need) on a VIA VT6421A controller at around $20.

I'm pretty sure that's the chip I tested on a card a little while back.
It works fine, but hotswap is not supported (or doesn't work).

Post by Stefan Schulz
I don't need RAID and or boot capability.

I believe they all work for booting. Using the raid function on any of
those joke cards (for raid) would be pretty stupid.

Volker

[Jaco]

Using a STLabs PCIe card from PBTech ATM - works fine.
I've not used (external) eSATA much on my machines, and the few times I
have I've had less-than-desirable experiences.

- J

Post by Stefan Schulz
Hello folks,
I'm still happily rocking on the (K)ubuntu 10.10 Maverick release (but
can upgrade if necessary). I need to get a 1TB SATA drive into one of
the the older systems which does not have native SATA support and
looking for a cheap controller. Nothing fancy.
Currently looking at a a three port SATA (plus IDE which I don't need)
on a VIA VT6421A controller at around $20. Google has good and bad
reports of that chipset on Linux with the more recent once looking ok.
I don't need RAID and or boot capability.
Any suggestions from real life users of this thing? OR similar cards?

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NZLUG mailing list ***@linux.net.nz
http://www.linux.net.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nzlug

[Volker Kuhlmann]

Post by Jaco
Using a STLabs PCIe card from PBTech ATM - works fine.
I've not used (external) eSATA much on my machines, and the few
times I have I've had less-than-desirable experiences.

What were the problems? There shouldn't be any functional difference
between eSATA and SATA. If th ehotplug support works, plugging in a disk
behaves the same as plugging in a USB storage device (except that the
USB performance sucks, which is why I use disk swap caddies).

Volker

[Jaco]

Nothing serious - I was making use of the cheapest eSATA dock I could
find at the time, but it was simply not picked up correctly by the OS.
I think I'll need to invest in some better quality (& more expensive)
equipment.

- J

Post by Volker Kuhlmann

Post by Jaco
Using a STLabs PCIe card from PBTech ATM - works fine.
I've not used (external) eSATA much on my machines, and the few
times I have I've had less-than-desirable experiences.

What were the problems? There shouldn't be any functional difference
between eSATA and SATA. If th ehotplug support works, plugging in a disk
behaves the same as plugging in a USB storage device (except that the
USB performance sucks, which is why I use disk swap caddies).
Volker

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[Jethro Carr]

Post by Volker Kuhlmann

Post by Jaco
Using a STLabs PCIe card from PBTech ATM - works fine.

I've used a tonne of these cards around the place, work nice, cheap as
chips. :-)

Post by Volker Kuhlmann

Post by Jaco
I've not used (external) eSATA much on my machines, and the few
times I have I've had less-than-desirable experiences.

What were the problems? There shouldn't be any functional difference
between eSATA and SATA. If th ehotplug support works, plugging in a disk
behaves the same as plugging in a USB storage device (except that the
USB performance sucks, which is why I use disk swap caddies).

Most of the issues I've seen with ESATA is with the handling of on/off.

I find with my nexstar dock, even if the disk is unmounted, if I
disconnect ESATA whilst the disk is running, the OS gets unhappy and
thinks it's been removed uncleanly.

If I first power off the disk via the dock's on/off button and THEN
remove the disk, it all runs fine.

The eject command never seemed to make any difference for me with this
behaviour.

But it is entirely possible that it's something specific to my
controller / disk / dock / OS combination, rather than a system wide
ESATA problem.


regards,
jethro