[conspire] Re: Recommendations for SATA RAID controller under Linux

[Rick Moen]

Hi, Roland. I've decided to answer you on CABAL's mailing list, rather
than SVLUG's.  I hope you don't mind.

Quoting Roland Krause (rokrau at yahoo.com):

> Folks,
> Can anybody recommend a SATA RAID controller that works well under
> Linux? 

It depends on (1) whether you're in the market for a new motherboard,
and (2) how much you intend to spend.

Motherboards
------------

If you're looking for a new motherboard, most new ones have SATA
chipsets built into them, and several of those have good support in
either recent 2.4 kernels or damned near any 2.6 one.

o  Intel ICH5/5R/6/6R:  These have really good support, by now.
o  VIA VT8237 South Bridge.  Ditto.
o  Silicon Image 3112 / 3114.  Pretty good support.
o  SiS 964 South Bridge.  Beta support.
o  ULi Electronics, Inc. (formerly ALi) M1573 South Bridge.  Very new driver.
o  Nvidia NForce3 family.  Proprietary drivers from mfr., very new open 
   source driver.

Cards
-----

If you're not looking for a new motherboard, then you're impliedly
looking for a PCI (PCI-X, PCI-Express) card to support SATA.

o  3Ware.  Excellent, supported since forever.  A bit expensive.
o  Adaptec AAR 2400, 2410, 2410SA, 2120S, 2200S, 2810SA, 21610SA
   series.   Excellent.  Good recent support.  A bit expensive.
o  LSI Logic.  Excellent.  Good recent support.  A bit expensive.
o  HighPoint Rocket Raid cards based on HPT374 and HPT372 chips.
   Adequate support starting 2.4.21-pre5.  Cheap.
o  Promise FastTrak series.  Some have OK support, some less so.

There are others, but the above are the ones most commonly mentioned.
Beware of new/substituted chips that might change the driver-support
issue utterly.  I maintain a page on the situation that you might 
find useful:

"Serial ATA" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Hardware