Arch Linux

userlander

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 413

IDE Controller Card?

Anyone using an IDE card they can recommend? I'm thinking of upgrading from my older A64 to an Intel quad core, but all of my devices are ATA. The cheap mobos for 775 only seem to have one IDE controller.

Another question I have is whether these cards are capable of doing the normal master/slave configuration for 2 devices per port, or since I guess it would have to be recognized in the BIOS as a SCSI device, whether they can only handle one per connection?

I'd also like to be able to boot from it so I can keep optical drives separate from hard drives, but it's not absolutely necessary. I'd prefer it, but it's not a deal breaker.

I was looking at one of these two:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6815124001
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a … 6816132005

I believe they both use a Silicon Image chipset, which afaik is supported in 2.6.x. Any thoughts or other suggestions?

userlander

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 413

Re: IDE Controller Card?

I need a prize as the only Arch linux user to use an IDE controller card!

Kirurgs

Member

Registered: 2008-10-20

Posts: 144

Re: IDE Controller Card?

This is not exactly Your case, but as noone replied, I can share my experience with controler cards...
I needed new HDD in my old Athlon 2500+ at home but it has only PATA support. So, I bought Sweex card (Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid]) + SATA HDD, because I wanted to use the same HDD in future and at that means SATA only...
To boot from it I set first boot device as external scsi card and it works really fine.
In your standard BIOS You'll not get HDD's detected at all, these will be detected just by Your card. I don't see any problems, why You should not be able to use 2 devices per cable...
This was true for SATA cards, but please try to avoid cards based on VIA chipsets, especially first models and cheap ones, they might be buggy and You might not be able to boot from them... Silicons are fine. Anyhow, please consult google before

P.S. I can't open these 2 links at the time of writing...

lilsirecho

Veteran

Registered: 2003-10-24

Posts: 5,000

Re: IDE Controller Card?

I have an IDE-pci with controller that I use in conjunction with a raid0 array as a third raid0 element.  My card is made4 by SIIG.

The system is intel based with 800MB fsb and has four SATA ports

The onboard raid control is capable of only two raid devices.  I use CF cards for raid0 and SATA to CF adapters for two 8GB CF cards.

The third CF card is installed with an adapter to the SIIG IDE pci add-on card.

My system is bootable from USB, SATA,SIIG or from non-raid IDE.

I haven't yet tried a raid0 boot.

Another card that I have which has two IDE ports includes an on-card bios chip.  This enables a reverse ID pattern for all IDE devices which is not present in the SIIG card.

This info may be of help..or not!

---

Prediction...This year will be a very odd year!
Hard work does not kill people but why risk it: Charlie Mccarthy
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When ALL is lost, what can be found? Even bytes get lonely for a little bit!     X-ray confirms Iam spineless!

userlander

Member

Registered: 2008-08-23

Posts: 413

Re: IDE Controller Card?

Okay - thanks very much. I already got a cheap one with silicone image chipset, but now I'm having trouble booting it.

With hard disks on the motherboard IDE (I'll call it IDE1) and optical drives on the card, the disk won't boot, either giving a Disk Boot Failure, or VMI hangup.

With the hard disks on the card and optical drives on IDE1, the computer will boot past grub, but then it says it can't find /dev/sda2 and dies.

I booted a Slax CD, and the drives when on the card are mounted as sdex and sdfx. But then grub will not boot no matter what I change the boot line to. I tried everything from sdax to sdfx, it just can't see the partition.

I can boot the computer if I only hook up the drives to the IDE channel and leave off the optical drives. But obviously that is not really useful and defeats the purpose for which I bought the card. :-p I also somehow had everything working at one point with disks on IDE1 and opticals on the card (except the opticals wouldn't boot, which I was trying to fix) but somehow I can't get that back. I've tried every configuration I can think of, cleared the CMOS, reset everything, still it doesn't work. As soon as I plug in the optical drives to the card, it just hangs at that VMI error.

Any advice before I give up on this motherboard and try a better one?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

N/M - I got it. I just had to boot the fallback image and then rebuild the kernel.  Now I have the drive on the card booting fine, and it also boots from optical.

Last edited by userlander (2009-01-24 19:01:23)