Re: SI3112A SATA controller RAID support?

Gabriel Ambuehl wrote:
> Hello Søren,
> 
> Sunday, February 15, 2004, 3:12:49 PM, you wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>>I'm wondering if there's no RAID support for the SI3112A in current
>>>as my drives in a RAID1 array show up as ad4 and ad6 but not as ar0 in
>>>the setup. So if I want to use those SATA drives in a RAID1 array, do
>>>I really need to get another controller (presumably Highpoint based)
>>>(software RAID is out of question)?
>>
>>All the ATA "RAID controllers" in this category are software based.
>>Support is depended on the BIOS type, as all that is needed is to know
>>the format of the RAID metadata stored on disk. Currently only HPT and
>>Promise formats are known, but I have code for AMI and Intel in the 
>>works (but far from usable yet)...
> 
> 
> Then how come I can rebuild arrays on those pseudo RAID controllers but
> not those created with atacontrol directly (i.e. pure software)? (Or am
> I just doing something wrong?)

As I said, the RAID metadata are not understood by the ATA driver, so if 
you use atacontrol to create a RAID it will put our generic metadata on 
the disk(s) which the BIOS doesn't understand, you have two incompatible 
software RAID setups...

There is NO hardware RAID functionality in the sii3112a whatsoever.

However there are *alot* of bugs in that silicon, making it the most 
crappy SATA chip in existance, but what can you expect from the company 
that brought us the CMD640 etc ;)

-- 
-Søren