December 10, 200817 yr I'd like to report that the Rosewill RC-218 4-port PCIe x4 SATA card works with unRAID v4.3.3. Its Marvell 88SX7042 chipset is supported by the sata_mv module. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018 My system: BIOSTAR TA690G AM2 AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard AMD Athlon X2 BE-2400 Brisbane 2.3GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor 2 x Kingston 512MB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Memory Rosewill RC-218 4-port PCIe x4 SATA card Antec earthwatts EA380 380W Power Supply AeroCool ZeroDegree ATX Mid Tower Case iStarUSA BPU-350SATA Aluminum Black 3 to 5 Bay HDD Hot-Swappable SATAII Enclosure Kingston DataTraveler I 2GB Flash Drive 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EACS 1TB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive 3 x Western Digital Caviar GP WD5000AACS 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive Edit: This card has no RAID modes, does not support optical drive, and does not support booting from any connected drives. It does not require any BIOS configuration. The card uses jumpers to choose either 4 internal SATA ports OR 2 internal SATA ports and 2 external eSATA ports. I have not used the eSATA ports, but I would assume they would appear just like the internal ports to unRAID/Linux. Rosewill's product page: http://www.rosewill.com/products/1128/productDetail.htm Edit again: This card is the same as StarTech's PEXSATA24E card: http://us.startech.com/product/PEXSATA24E-2-Port-eSATA-4-Port-SATA-PCI-Express-x4-SATA-Controller-Adapter-Card-PCIe
December 12, 200817 yr Hey, can you let me know what type of throughput you get with that card. I considered it be decided to go with 2 refurb Promise TX4s from the egg.
December 13, 200817 yr Author I am getting about the same throughput as the motherboard SATA ports - about 70mb/s according to hdparm tests.
January 2, 200917 yr Hi, I just replace my promise TX4 PCI card with this one and now my parity check went from 30 MB/s to 60 MB/s...That good. This card has the same Marvell 88SX704 chip as the Adaptec 1430SA card. Mike
January 2, 200917 yr I've noticed this card before, and contemplated purchasing. But, I've always had the impression in my mind that Rosewill was a computer company with questionable product quality. Am I right to feel this way? What's everyone's experience been. If a lot of folks have had good experience's I might buy this card. Good price for the specs.
January 6, 200917 yr Rosewill is a house brand for Newegg... I have only seend Rosewill offered by newegg and on ebay (which was probably bought from newegg originally). I have mixed thoughts on rosewill, I have gotten some decent components from them, well decent enough to not really remember good or bad so they must have worked as intended. Though I did purchase an eSata enclosure from then which worked well for about a year, at which time the fan started to get really loud and needed replacing. It was hardwired to the enclosure so it would have been a pain. I ended up getting rid of the item I was using it with... so not a huge deal. You get what you pay for. Electronics can be a tough area in this subject though, they can either go to crap right away or last forever. I personally would only buy sub $100 parts from rosewill or something not critical that I want to save a buck from.
January 6, 200917 yr I've had good luck with Rosewill parts, but do consider it an economy brand. I've got sata and ide pci expansion cards that have never failed or gave me problems. I would have no problems using any of there hard drive expanion cards in an unRaid server because if the card dies, it is highly unlikely you'd lose any data. You can plug that drive(s) into another port and be good. I would not, for example, use one of their 4 port sata cards to build a Raid 5 array with critical data and run paying customer's databases from that array.
July 12, 200916 yr I'd like to report that the Rosewill RC-218 4-port PCIe x4 SATA card works with unRAID v4.3.3. Its Marvell 88SX7042 chipset is supported by the sata_mv module. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132018... Looking at upgrading to a Pro system and adding HDs for more storage. I use a Supermicro C2SEE motherboard and looking to add quality SATA II ports at the best price. The Rosewell in on sale now so looks like a good time to buy. Is this a good choice and what does "...supported by the sata_mv module..." mean? Do I have to do a special setup or just plug it in, attach HDs and upgrade to Pro? Also there should no problems adding 2 of these for 8 more SATA HDs ports and will unRAID support the 2 eSATA ports?
July 12, 200916 yr will unRAID support the 2 eSATA ports? Keep in mind, the way the eSata ports usually work is via a jumper which selects the internal OR external port. Will the eSata ports work with unRAID, yes as long as the controller is supported (which I believe it is) and you are aware that two internal ports will be switched off when enabled.
July 12, 200916 yr Author what does "...supported by the sata_mv module..." mean? Do I have to do a special setup or just plug it in, attach HDs and upgrade to Pro? Also there should no problems adding 2 of these for 8 more SATA HDs ports and will unRAID support the 2 eSATA ports? sata_mv is the driver module that allows the Linux kernel in unRAID to use the SATA card. I just pointed it out for Tom's benefit as a reason to continue including that module in unRAID. There is no special setup. I just plugged it in and it worked. I am only using one of these at the moment, so I don't know if there are any issues using more than one of these controllers. The board uses jumpers to choose either 4 internal SATA ports OR 2 internal SATA ports and 2 external eSATA ports. I have not used the eSATA ports, but I would assume they would appear just like the internal ports to unRAID/Linux.
July 13, 200916 yr what does "...supported by the sata_mv module..." mean? Do I have to do a special setup or just plug it in, attach HDs and upgrade to Pro? Also there should no problems adding 2 of these for 8 more SATA HDs ports and will unRAID support the 2 eSATA ports? sata_mv is the driver module that allows the Linux kernel in unRAID to use the SATA card. I just pointed it out for Tom's benefit as a reason to continue including that module in unRAID. There is no special setup. I just plugged it in and it worked. I am only using one of these at the moment, so I don't know if there are any issues using more than one of these controllers. The board uses jumpers to choose either 4 internal SATA ports OR 2 internal SATA ports and 2 external eSATA ports. I have not used the eSATA ports, but I would assume they would appear just like the internal ports to unRAID/Linux. Thanks, I just ordered one. Now if I could just find a couple of 1.5TB HD for $100 ($200) I would be set.
July 22, 200916 yr what does "...supported by the sata_mv module..." mean? Do I have to do a special setup or just plug it in, attach HDs and upgrade to Pro? Also there should no problems adding 2 of these for 8 more SATA HDs ports and will unRAID support the 2 eSATA ports? sata_mv is the driver module that allows the Linux kernel in unRAID to use the SATA card. I just pointed it out for Tom's benefit as a reason to continue including that module in unRAID. There is no special setup. I just plugged it in and it worked. I am only using one of these at the moment, so I don't know if there are any issues using more than one of these controllers. The board uses jumpers to choose either 4 internal SATA ports OR 2 internal SATA ports and 2 external eSATA ports. I have not used the eSATA ports, but I would assume they would appear just like the internal ports to unRAID/Linux. I have the card installed with 2 drives hooked to it but they don't show up. Do I need to install drivers for the card and if so how do you install them?
July 24, 200916 yr Author I have the card installed with 2 drives hooked to it but they don't show up. Do I need to install drivers for the card and if so how do you install them? What version of unRAID are you using? I'm currently using v4.4.2, and I have not tried the current version (v4.5beta6). Can you post a syslog?
July 24, 200916 yr What version of unRAID are you using? I'm currently using v4.4.2, and I have not tried the current version (v4.5beta6). Can you post a syslog? Got it going as posted in this thread. I had 2 different power cables that were bad.
July 24, 200916 yr Hi, I just replace my promise TX4 PCI card with this one and now my parity check went from 30 MB/s to 60 MB/s...That good. This card has the same Marvell 88SX704 chip as the Adaptec 1430SA card. Mike Too bad we can't dispense with the Adaptec 1430sa's bios chip alltogether and use native chipset support....
September 17, 200916 yr Good News Fellow unRAID'ers. I received my controller and tested it out in the ASUS P5B-VM DO motherboard. I read some interesting web sites that seemed to lead that this chipset supports port multipliers... Lo and Behold, I tested it out this eve with my portable Venus port 2 Drive port multiplier and I can report it is working in unRAID Beta-5.6. It was a bit if jumping around the settings on the device, but once I switched it to JBOD everything started working. 2 drives on 1 eSATA Cable (JBOD). The raid1, raid0 and safe modes worked too, but you could not access them via smartctl. In JBOD mode you can access each drive directly. I did a quick DD test, The drives talk at 83MB/s with hdparm -t tests. (250G Seagate 7200.9) With the DD test the speed was around 65MB/s. I ran 2 simultaneous DD's one for eadh drive and each drive reported 65MB/s at the same time. I have not run real world data on this card yet, but I thought it worth while to mention the progress so far.
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