Subject: Re: supported SATA RAID card?
To: Mike M. Volokhov <mishka@apk.od.ua>
From: Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@netbsd.org>
List: current-users
Date: 03/01/2005 17:13:57
On Tue, 2005-03-01 at 16:58, Mike M. Volokhov wrote:

> > 
> > There are a number of cards available these days from various vendors
> > that implement IDE or SATA at a physical level, but at the
> > register/programmer's model level are designed to look like SCSI.  A lot
> > of the Highpoint cards work this way, for example.
> 
> Excuse me for offtopic.
> 
> Does this mean that with any SATA drive it would gain SCSI advantages,
> such as command queueing, low CPU usage, and so on?

I suspect it will depend on the card.

Some cheap ones will probably do very little; more expensive ones may go
as far as to emulate full tagged queueing in the card so you only
'think' you are talking to the disk.

I have to emphasise here that I've never *used* a card like this, though
I have had one pass through my hands (but since there was no NetBSD
support for it and it was only a cheap-and-nasty one I didn't hang onto
it).

R.