[dundee] ESATA Linux Support

[Simon Wells]

Thanks Andrew,

That was more or less exactly what I wanted to know. eSATA seems to  
offer the right bang versus buck for my use-case.

Simon

Dr. Simon Wells
=============

E-mail: 	swells at computing.dundee.ac.uk
IM: 		sw3lls at yahoo.co.uk
Mail: 	School of Computing,
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		University of Dundee,
		Dundee, DD1 4HN.
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On 9 Mar 2009, at 19:12, Andrew Clayton wrote:

> 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
>
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