Re: [ale] IDE Raid Controller that works with Slackware 8.1 ?

[Jeff Tucker <jefft@wciatl.com>]

--On Monday, June 30, 2003 9:12 PM -0400 Christopher Bergeron 
<christopher@bergeron.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of an IDE Raid (5) controller that works well under
> Slackware?  Specifically, I'd like to avoid cards like the Promise SX4000
> - the one that says it works with Linux but has closed source drivers and
> only works with Redhat and Suse.  I guess any card that has open-source
> drivers will work, but if you guys have any tips or brands to recommend,
> please let me know.
>
>
> Much thanks,
> CB
>

The 3ware cards work great. They give you true hardware RAID for IDE 
drives. Excellent Linux support and I've put several on Slackware. The 
driver is open-source and integrated with the kernel at this point. The 
slackware installer supports that driver in its scsi.s kernel, if I 
remember correctly.

The 3ware controller basically makes an array (RAID0 through RAID5 or 10 
depending on which card you buy) look like a SCSI drive to Linux. Linux 
then uses its native SCSI support to talk to the array. You get true 
hardware RAID, including background rebuilds. You probably shouldn't try 
hot-swap, though, as it's not really speced for IDE.

Jeff

-- 
Jeff Tucker
Williams Consulting, Inc.
jefft@wciatl.com
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