[Sussex] Lots of IDE drives...

[Paul Tansom]

Ronan Chilvers wrote:
> I've got lots of small IDE drives (4ish GB) that I'd like to use to
> learn a bit about software raid.  My kick around machine at home has
> the usual 4 IDE channels, but I'd like to be attaching around 5 drives
> plus CD.  It seems I can get a PCI ide controller card from Novatech
> for around 20 quid.  I'll be using either Ubuntu or Debian.
> 
> Anyone done this and can recommend a good card?  Is an extra controller
> card a good way to go?  Any more suggestions?  Cheap is good with this
> one since I'm just playing around but I don't want to have to jump
> through any hoops with the hardware.

Be careful what chipset the card uses. My original IDE cards used a
Highpoint chipset which worked well with Linux (initially by simply
using boot parameters), but when I tried using the cards recently and
found that they had the 137G capacity limit I needed to purchase a
couple of new cards (my drives are 160G ones).

My first pass was more than a bit rash (certainly for me since I usually
spend ages researching chipsets, reviews, prices, etc.). I got a couple
of ITE based cards which, although supported in technical terms can't be
considered as well supported. The cards had drivers with them for the
main distributions and source as well, but after initial success with
the old Debian stable I came to the point of needing to compile the
drivers and the hassle of compiling in with the kernel for boot time
support or getting them into an initrd image was just too much like
hassle. A bit of research showed the drivers to be considered less than
perfect, and Alan Cox is actually working on new ones (that go in as IDE
drives instead of using SCSI emulation I believe), but these are still
not into the stable kernel tree.

Anyway, the outcome of this is that I've got a couple of new cards (the
old ones will be used elsewhere for now and by the time they hit Linux
machines again the drivers will probably be stable!). The new cards use
a Silicon Image chipset which works nicely with the Debian installer
(from the latest stable release) to go straight into a RAID install with
(in my case) mirrored partitions all round (/, /boot, swap, etc. -
actually I didn't separate /boot on this install).

I got a couple of cards from Maplin in the end (too much hassle finding
out the chipsets on many of the mail order cards I could have got, and I
didn't want to spend a fortune on Adaptec or other branded ones). There
was also a review against the card stating that they worked with SuSE
(although I was a little reserved about this in case the chipset had
changed since. I noted this on a keyboard at Novatech a year or so back,
one batch they had in had a USB hub built in and this was reviewed, but
wasn't in the spec., and not in the current batch when I asked!).

Maplin were local and I got them to open up the box so I could read the
chip itself :)

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=32106&doy=19m9D

I thought they were £20, but either they've gone up or I've got it wrong
as those are £25, but look to be the same ones.

As an aside I'm not using the RAID on the card, just using it as extra
(faster and higher capacity) IDE channels.

Ook, that was a longer post than I was expecting!

-- 
Paul Tansom | Aptanet Ltd. | http://www.aptanet.com/