[sclug] Hotplugable SATA drives under Linux.

[Roland Turner SCLUG]

David Kerrawn wrote:


> I'm looking to replace the blown Maxtor drive on my home machine with
> hot pluggable SATA drives in a raid-5 config. Does anybody here have
> any  experience with hotplugging SATA on Linux? Especially with respect
> to  SATA cards, drives, enclosures, drivers etc.


I've yet to do this with hotplugging (although I aim to do it shortly),
but the repeated advice in much of the documentation and many of the
mailing list archives that I read when I was exploring this appeared to be
to use 3Ware controllers to do SATA on Linux and 3Ware certified drive
bays to do hotplug, if you really need it.


It is certain that there are other controllers that do SATA on Linux
natively (indeed, I've encountered an Intel board with an onboard
controller that did just this) and even more that will do it with
drivers/patches - if you want something to tinker with or want to do it on
the cheap then these may be of interest, but if you're after something
that you can expect to work without tinkering, the 3Ware devices appear to
be the way to go. I also found no information about any other
manufacturer's devices that were claimed to do hotplug under Linux; in
particular the Intel motherboard that I was looking at stated explicitly
that its hotplug facility was not available under Linux.


- Raz