[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 9:53 AM, X-otic Computer Systems of San Antonio  
> wrote:
> 
>> 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 ;)
> 
> Meh, the "real" RAID controller performance was better, but not as  
> high as I wanted (though I didn't try very hard to optimize it). It's  
> pretty old though (MegaRAID 150-6) - newer cards probably work a lot  
> better. I would say for a dedicated server, such as DB server, a  
> hardware RAID makes a lot of sense. As would it on a gaming rig, I  
> suppose. Software RAID is pretty hot in Linux though. Of course it's  
> only as good as the drivers that control the hardware :)
> 
> This is the first time I've had significant issues with the 3112 since  
> the FreeBSD fiasco (which was like 2 years ago). However, I have since  
> changes OSes (to Ubuntu from Gentoo) so that could be part of it. Like  
> I said, I did read some Seagates had issues, although my old Seagates  
> didn't have any problems. However, I was running those on the hardware  
> RAID controller.
> 

Oh, the reason I want a real raid controller isn't for performance, it's 
because my home fileserver is an abysmal collection of 5 drives on 5 
mount points, with no proper redundancy. It's a ticking timebomb. My own 
fault, but still, yuck :(

-Sean