[XCSSA] I hate Silicon Image...

[X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio]

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


FWIW, even though I know it's old and was cheap, the 3112 is still a 
solid performer on a ST3320620AS - 60MB/sec easy. This is, however, 
under NetBSD. I haven't tried it under Linux; the Linux box is using the 
onboard nforce junk.

I haven't tried the 3112 with anything larger thana 750GB, mind you. 
Holding off on upgrading anything in this machine until I can put a real 
RAID in it ;)

-Sean