Re: external drive enclosures / esata / port multipliers?
On Mon, 17 Jan 2011, Monte Milanuk wrote:
> My big question is... most of these external drive boxes seem to
> claim support for JBOD, RAID 0, 1, 10, 5, etc. - should I presume
> that is simply fake RAID like many commodity mobos have, and not
Either that, or worse: data-eating crap like many low-cost PCI-SATA host
bridges (such as some of the sil3xxx chips).
> really usable in Linux? In that case, with all the drives hanging
> off the one eSATA connection, will Linux (specifically Debian
> Squeeze) see all four drives, or just the first one? Will I be able
> to configure them in a RAID5 array as desired?
It will see all disks, yes. But if the port-multiplier chip is buggy
crap, your data is toast. It is best to avoid SATA port multipliers
like the plague because of that, since it is extremely difficult to shop
for an external bay with a particular chipset...
Look for a specific hardware product that has been in the market for at
least two years, and with many happy *Linux* users (Windows drivers
might be working around chip errata unknown to Linux libata). Sorry, I
can't personally recommend any.
Or get a SAS HBA, and a SAS-attached enclosure. Far more expensive, but
at least you can be sure it will work very well (yes, it will take SATA
disks as well as the more expensive (and better) SAS disks).
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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