I just installed this card in my machine.  My questions is that in the syslog it appears that the drives are showing up as ata drives.  Is this correct? ata5: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88a2120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata6: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88a4120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata7: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88a6120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata8: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88a8120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata9: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88b2120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata10: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88b4120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata11: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88b6120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

ata12: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000 ctl 0xf88b8120 bmdma 0x00000000 irq 11

 

thanks

Yes, that is normal.

 

I bought this SuperMicro controller and plan to install tonight.  Could some kind soul please comment on how I should configure my drives?

 

My MB (Asus P4C800 Deluxe) has 2 SATA150 ports on an ICH5, and 2 SATA150 ports on an on-board Promise controller.

 

I believe that the ICH5 does NOT use the PCI bus, but that the Promise does, even though its on the MB.  My ethernet chip, also on the MB, is on the PCI bus.

 

I am hooking up 3 new 750G drives.  And was considering the following ...

 

1.  Use the iCH5 with one new 750G drive (parity) + one 500G drive

2.  Keep 2x500G on the Promise contoller

3.  Put 3 disks on the SuperMicro (2x750G + 1x500G)

 

I was hoping that putting one of the 750G as parity on the ICH5 would benefit most from the separate I/O channel and non-PCI I/O bandwidth.  It is at the slower SATA150 speed, but that's probably not a big deal.

 

I was also thinking of abandoning the 2 Promise ports altogether, and moving 5 drives to the SuperMicro.

 

Thanks for your thoughts or suggestions!

 

- Brian

I believe the ICH5 uses a 266MB/s Hub interface, if you saturate the PCI bus, like during a parity check, you have 133MB/s remaining for the 2 onboard ICH5 Sata drives. I’d put the biggest drives on the ICH5 for parity check/rebuild optimization.

 

For 7 drives parity check will start at around 24MB/s (5 drives using PCI bus which in my experience has a real limit of 120MB/s), after finishing the 4x500GB drives, speed should increase to 55-60MB/s (2 drives on the PCI bus), if you add another > 500 drive I’d use the remaining ICH5 port first.

 

Great info - Thanks!

 

Ok, so I'll definitely keep the ICH5 for parity and for another big disk.

 

Any reason to keep (or not to keep) some drives on the on-board Promise controller?