[XCSSA] I hate Silicon Image...

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

On Jun 12, 2009, at 7:44 AM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio  
wrote:

> X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio wrote:
>> ...long story short, I'm only getting 2-6MB/sec write performance per
>> drive. I think this is because of the chipset being used (SiI  
>> 3112). I
>> know it's notorious for completely sucking. Oddly enough, this  
>> chipset
>> is what is on the LSI MegaRAID card. That's how I ran into the
>> problem, in fact. I disabled my RAID BIOS so I could do software RAID
>> and spin drives down, etc.
>>
>> The actual story is much more complex and sad, but I figured I would
>> stop here :)
>>
>> Yes, I know, getting a new card will solve the problem :) I'm  
>> aware. I
>> just would like to buy some time until I can find a suitable
>> replacement (which will probably be an ITX board with on-board SATA
>> ports).
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Tim
>
> I had a motherboard with that sata chipset that was from 2003 I think.
> Yes it was not very good.  I think the 3112 was the first chipset that
> silimage ever made for sata.

Yeah that sounds about right. Both my SATA cards are from 2004  
(including the MegaRAID). I had tried using my non-RAID card and it  
doesn't even recognize the 1TB drives. When I tried using the card  
with FreeBSD, it would just kernel panic, so I'm pretty sure it's a  
very terrible chipset. Supposedly the newer chipsets (3124+) are much  
better.

 From looking online, it looks like the performance issues are in part  
due to the driver issues inherent in the card, but also an ugly  
compatibility hack with Seagate drives which basically nukes  
performance. I think there's a work-around, but it's all for kernels  
much older than the one that ships with Ubuntu. I might try a newer  
kernel, but I used Ubuntu so I didn't have to end up doing that all  
the time (though I don't mind doing it so much).

Oh well. I've only got about 80 more hours until the RAID has finished  
rebuilding :P