[dundee] ESATA Linux Support

[Andrew Clayton]

On Mon, 9 Mar 2009 18:56:34 +0000, Simon Wells wrote:

> Does anybody have any experience of using eSATA with Linux?

Funny you should ask that. I've just started using it myself.

> I have been looking at something like the following:
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/EdgeStore-DAS801T-Bay-eSATA-Enclosure/dp/B001H54JWW/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t
> 
> My plan would be to organise it as two separate JBOD arrays, using
> LVM, and connected via eSATA. The two arrays will give me some
> measure of redundancy and will make backing up my data much simpler.
> There is also a second remote server that holds backups and very
> important data is also archived to DVD.
> 
> At the moment I am using a whole pile of separate external USB drives
> and want to simplify the system by getting all of the drives into a
> single unit. Am I missing anything? I have not used eSATA with Linux
> myself and would like to know if there are any gotchas or things that
> I should be aware of.

The good thing with eSATA (for me anyway) is that it bypasses the USB
stack! and appears just as a direct attached SCSI device, but still
with the usual hot plugging you've come to expect from USB. Recent
kernels also support port multipliers.

I didn't find a great range of eSATA cards and just ended up getting an
el cheapo Sata SiI 3114 based one which are well supported. See
http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html though probably somewhat out of date. So you may want to just double check what your getting, though I'd say chances are fairly good that whatever it is will just work.

So yeah, for me, eSATA is the way to go for building some external
storage without paying crazy money.

Oh and if you do plan to setup up RAID, use Linux's software RAID (MD)
that way if you ever move the array to a different machine with a
different controller or you need to replace the existing controller with
something different, you won't be stuffed.
 

Andrew