[ILUG] Highpoint Sata RAID

[Niall O Broin]

On 22 Mar 2005, at 22:03, FRLinux wrote:

> I am looking for a Serial ATA RAID Controller card and Highpoint has
> two types, a 2 port  (1520) and the 4 ports (1640). Their site
> indicates compatibility with FreeBSD, and several Linux including
> several 2.6.x kernels.
>
> Has anyone got experience with such a card under Linux ? I would be
> specifically interested in its use in hardware RAID.

The cheap cards do not do hardware RAID, despite what they might claim. 
All RAID is of course software but with what is called hardware RAID, 
that software runs on a processor on the controller. With Linux 
software RAID, or RAID on the cheap Highpoint or Promise cards, the 
software runs on the host CPU. There is a reason why these cards cost 
50 EUR and 3Ware or similar cost 4x as much. They require an OS level 
driver to implement RAID and in the case of Linux, the md driver has 
undergone much more testing than any vendor's own driver - so if you're 
going to run RAID software on the host CPU, it might as well be the 
most tested code.


Niall