Has anybody had any experience with these:

http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_enclosur ... VAodR0M1vA
http://www.pc-pitstop.com/sata_raid_controllers/

Some of the RAID controllers, including the nicely priced Silicon Image ones do list Linux support as a feature, but there doesn't appear to be much detail of technical info.

If they're supported in the kernel used in KnoppMyth they look like a pretty cheap way of adding fairly massive storage capacity. But I'm not really fond of kernel recompiles or of binary device driver modules that are locked to a very small number of specific kernel versions.

I've emailed the sales contact listed on that website to see if they can provide more details about the Linux support.

Here is a link that tell you about the different raid controller and there linux support. Right now Knoppmyth 5C7 is using kernal ver. 2.6.15. I tried the highpoint one and had alot of problems with it. I ended up going with the 3ware one but it is very expense. Here is the link for the info.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

_________________
Marty

Long live Myth and Knoppmyth!!!!!

Why not just use software, I use that and it's easier and much cheaper.

If you are talking about using LVM. From what I have read it doesn't give you any redundancy, if you lose one drive everything is gone. I have a several hundard DVD's and some important shows so I didn't want to take the chance of looseing them if I had a drive blow out on me.

_________________
Marty

Long live Myth and Knoppmyth!!!!!

No, not really talking about LVM even though you could put an LVM layer on a raid setup and it would work fine with redundancy. Software raid has been shown to be even faster than hardware...in my tests the hardware raid controller is nothing more than a very expensive SATA controller.

Oh, sorry if my post was misleading. I wasn't really even talking about the hardware RAID capabilities of the cards that I referred to as RAID cards.

I was referencing specifically the enclosures and the 4X Multilane connector. Take a look if you didn't follow the links I posted. This company has basically stand alone "box of disks" with a connector that they call 4X Multilane connector which carries 4 SATA connections on a single cable.

They offer a bracket that will merge 4 standard SATA connectors into a single 4X Multilane connector, but they also list some PCI cards that have the 4X Multilane connector directly on them.

Yes, you could use hardware RAID, but I suspect you could also just use the PCI card as 4 SATA devices and software RAID them if you prefer. The point is that server cases that can hold lots of disk get pretty expensive and power supplies that can power lots of disk can get pretty expensive too.

This vendor is selling dedicated disk enclosures that hold, power, and cool disks for as cheap as $136 for 4 disks and $219 for 8 disks. Now, if the Silicon Image card works under Linux (and they claim it does, but without any technical details listed on the site) then that's just an additional $48 per 4 disks for the PCI card to link the external enclosure.

That's pretty outstanding if it works. Newegg has a 750GB Seagate SATA drive for $410. So for non-redundant storage that gives you:

4 x $410 = $1640
1 x $136 = $136
1 x $48 = $48
4 x 750GB = 3TB for $1824

8 x $410 = $3280
1 x $219 = $219
2 x $48 = $96
8 x 750GB = 6TB for $3595

That's $0.60 per GB. And for a couple hundred dollars more you can step up to hot swappable drive trays and individual drive temperature monitoring.

Now, obviously if you want RAID you'll need to adjust those numbers downwards, but even so, 2TB of mirrored storage for under 2 grand seems like a pretty terrific deal if it's true.

The catch is whether it works and works well with Linux. I can't vouch for this hardware at all. I just saw it and wondered if anyone else had tried using it with KnoppMyth.

I guess Im used to going the cheap. I just buy server cases that can hold 10-12 drives and pop some nice fans in there and they work fine. I have external sata cords that I just wrap around and plug in and software raid them and it works like a charm. Given Im using 250 HDs now because it comes out to about 36 cents a gig but I figure if I want more I will just buy another case and throw some more drives in there.

Also(I've thought about doing this) if you only use it for mass storage and speed it not really an issue they have nice USB/Firewire external cases that have anything and you can put 4-8 drives in there with one wire coming out the back.

Where are you getting server cases cheap? I haven't looked recently, but when I did look it seemed like getting more than a couple drives required going into premium priced cases.

For reference, my KnoppMyth box is a Dell SC420. I paid $242.74 for it which included case, power supply, motherboard, CPU, RAM, CDROM, and a 160GB SATA drive.

This case has two 3.5" bays and two 5.25" bays. One of the 5.25" bays holds the CDROM, the other hold a 3.5" drive mounted on $5 brackets.

What brand/model power supply are you using that can power 10-12 drives? I'm under the impression that putting too much load on a power supply is bad for both the supply and the drives if the PSU isn't beefy enough to handle it.

When you say 36 cents per gig, do you take into account SATA/PATA cards? Most motherboards I've seen support 2-4 drives (and putting slaves on IDE is generally considered sub-optimal). Once you've used up the ports on your motherboard, using 250GB drives requires spending twice as much money on SATA or PATA cards.

That vendor I mentioned did send me a link to more technical info on the chipset. Looks like it probably does work well with Linux. I'm not completely decided yet, but I'm thinking about buying one.

Those cards are based around the Sil 3124 which has Linux drivers.
Please see:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/index.aspx

If you're going to put a bunch of drives into it you probably want to spend a bit more on the case, but it doesn't have to be that much, you will need a nice beefy power supply however. Something like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811119068 or this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811129152 will hold quite a few drives.

I've had more troubles with heat than power supply with having lots of disks in a case. Maybe modern sata drives are cooler than the 200G PATAs I was working with, but do keep an eye on temperatures.

The Antec case linked above a clip for an additional 120mm fan in front of the HD cage, and that's definitely a recommended enhancement if you want to pile on a max population of drives.