[Eug-lug] External SATA

[Garl Grigsby]

Garl Grigsby wrote:

>   Does anybody have an experience with SATA drives under Linux? 
> Specifically I am looking at getting a HighPoint Rocket 1511 e.SATA 
> and a couple of  RocketMate 1100 External Disk cases to use as offsite 
> backup. My experience with USB2.0 has been nothing but a disaster and 
> I want nothing more of it. Presently I see my options as either 
> Firewire or e.SATA. I need something that is hot swappable and is 
> reliable. Anybody have a suggestions?

While I know it is in poor taste to reply to your own posts, here is 
what I have found through further research.

External SATA (e.SATA) is a neat idea but it falls down in a lot of 
places. The cables that HighPoint are using are actually 4-6 pin 
Firewire cables. The 4 pin connectors seem a tad fragile to me. Hotpoint 
lists Linux support for the 1511 card but only through binary drivers 
and only for older kernels (Redhat 9 is the newest). They do not support 
hot swapping (that is a killer right here).  [1]

USB 2.0 for external harddrives seems to be hit and miss. There are some 
of the bridging chipsets that work good, some that work marginally, and 
others (the one I bought, DOH!) that don't work worth a damn. The 
problem with this that nobody lists what chipset is in what case. So you 
either get lucky or you return the case. With the particular chipset I 
have (Genesys: Remember that name and avoid it) it seems to like to 
timeout during longer transfers and bork the entire usb system. This can 
sometimes be fixed by rmmod'ing the usb-storage and sd-mod modules and 
then modprobe them back in, but other times the only solution is to 
reboot. Currently there is a patch out for the 2.6.7 kernel, but I am 
not prepared for the 2.6 upgrade.

I am just now starting to dig into Firewire. I have found that the 
Oxford 911 chipset (ide to firewire bridge) appears to be well 
supported. Now I simply need to find a external case that uses this 
chipset and a Firewire card that has solid Linux support.

Comments appreciated.
Garl

[1] http://www.dansdata.com/esata.htm