[Novalug] SATA

Ken Kauffman kkauffman@headfog.com
Sat Mar 17 16:18:02 EDT 2007


It's there.  SATA1 = 150 / SATA2 = 300.  You need an interface 
(card/chipset) that supports SATA2 if you go that route.  There is no 
incompatibility between the two except if your SATA connection only 
supports SATA1.  At which point, the SATA2 drive would operate at SATA2 
transfer speeds.  No daisy chaining at all with SATA.  Each SATA drive 
gets a single connector cable that goes from it to the controller.  No 
terminators are necessary as a result.

I have 8 SATA1 drives in a Raid-5 on a Highpoint card.  Works just fine 
with 2.6 kernel.

I also have a workstation that runs 2/150 and 1/300 drive running a 2.6 
kernel.  No issues so far.

I've also booted a myriad of other machines from other live Linux 
distributions.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the kernel typically shows 
the drives as sd* and not hd*.

Ken

Dan Arico wrote:
> I've been looking at SATA drives and I've got a few questions that I get 
> only vague or useless answers for so I'm hoping we have some expertise 
> here.
> 
> 1. Linux support? Should I assume it's in there or do I need to search 
> out drivers and the like?
> 
> 2. SATA-1 vs SATA-2? Does one just run faster? Can I plug a SATA-2 device 
> into a SATA-1 port and just have it run slower or is there 
> incompatibility?
> 
> 3. Daisy-chaining? It appears that the drives are intended to be 
> daisy-chained to a single port. Does that work well? How many drives can 
> be supported? Is any termination necessary?
> 
> Dan Arico
>  



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