Re: [gentoo-user] Any recommendations for PCI-X SATA cards?

[Michael Mol]

On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 6:48 PM,  <felix@×××××××.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 23, 2012 at 06:32:30PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>
>> There are three modules on one side of the PCB. Each module has two
>> SATA ports. There are two modules on the flip side that each have only
>> one SATA port. So, that's 3x2+2, or 8.
>
> How easy is it to connect to cables in one of the doubles?

Um, pretty easy? Same as how difficult it might be to plug one into
your motherboard.

>
> My tower is pretty full, but some of that is 3 SCSI drives, and I may
> at some point change all three to a single SSD drive and put in two
> more 4T drives.

Sure.

>
>> The reason I'm only using 3? This system doesn't have PCI-X, only PCIe
>> and PCI. So I want as much as reasonable plugged into the mainboard's
>> SATA ports.
>
> Why not use the PCIe slots for SATA to get more speed?  I suppose you
> could just want bulk where speed is not essential, or they could be full....

I didn't have non-GPU PCIe slots when I bought the cards, and I don't
have a PCIe SATA controller. When I bought the cards, I did happen to
have a prescott-based dual-xeon system with a couple PCI-X slots I
wanted to take advantage of. It only took a couple days' having that
machine powered up before I realized I didn't need that powerful of an
electric space heater in my apartment...

The one thing I'd really like to change over what I've got...I'd like
to have the correct-length SATA cables, rather than having plenty of
SATA cables all of worst-case length.

Well, the other thing I'd like to change is use hot-swap bays instead
of the semi-fixed bays I've got. Then I wouldn't need to move cables
around if I need to remove drives. (That got to be a problem earlier
this week.) But that's not the fault of the controller.


-- 
:wq