Re: ATA Raid Controller Recommendations

From: Udo Wolter (uwp_at_dicke-aersche.de)
Date: 10/10/03 

Date: 10 Oct 2003 08:58:28 GMT

Måns Rullgård <mru@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>> * The 3ware Escalade 7506/8506 cards seem to be in about the same
>> price range as the intel card, and about the same feature set. Reviews
>> for this one are easier to find, and seem to uniformly agree that the
>> card flies for reading and is a lot slower for writing to the discs,
>> and it has a rather minimal amount of cache, which could be a worry...
> I haven't used any of them myself, but a while back I was considering
> buying one, and mailed both 3ware and Adaptec with a few questions.
> 3ware never replied. An engineer from Adaptec did reply, and answered

We have 3ware here and they run at this time. But we had lots of trouble
and I really can't recommend them. Driver trouble, slow, bad support etc.

> all my questions. The Linux support in drivers should be about the
> same for these cards. One problem with (almost) all RAID cards is
> that the setup programs are proprietary. Some even have proprietary
> drivers (Promise). I'd stay away from these.

Yes. Our solution here is different. We're using a SCSI controller
(Adaptec) because the SCSI controllers are well supported. And we buy
IDE-RAID boxes where you put IDE disks in and SCSI comes out. This
is way cheaper than SCSI disks and almost as reliable. It's fast and
we have almost no trouble with them. Ok, native RAID cards maybe cheaper
than a SCSI card plus IDE-RAID box but think about the time you
lose when you have trouble with the drivers. For me this is trouble too.

Mermgfurt,
                Udo 

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