NASLite Network Attached Storage

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PostPosted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 1:07 am 
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Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:42 am
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Location: Henry, Virginia, USA
    Can anyone tell me if the Silicon Image SIL3124 Chipset is compatible with NASLite 2? It is not mentioned in the NASLite-2 Hardware Reference Guide. It will be on a PCI 32-Bit 33MHz Interface, the PCI interface (I have been assuming) of my current NASlite PC (circa 1999-2000 — Compaq Presario Desktop PC 7000Z-7AP1 with Asus AMD 751 Chipset K7M; the motherboard specs do not specify the USB version, though the AGP is listed as 2x).

    Is the System Message Log quoted below purporting to tell me that I have a PCI 2.1 (allowing for 66 MHz signalling at 3.3 volt signal voltage) interface allowing peak transfer rate of 533 MB/s rather than the 133 MB/s of PCI(1)? Are PCI 2.1 and PCI 2.2 the same; if not, what are the differences?

    The SATA card on which the chipset above is based might, just might, perform at 3.0 Mb/s — it variously claimed and disputed — if all the stars align, if all the info offered here is correct. I have really done some slogging to collect this information. Hopefully any post responder will not need to do the same, and that it will be of benefit to others.

    All this will help in my choice of this card, especially as I am connecting to a 1TB hard drive capable of 3.0 Mb/s, which is currently connected by a 3.0 SATA external case and connected through USB (a complete waste of the drive's capability) which also has an eSATA 3.0 connector. An upper limit of 3.0 Gb/s is claimed for the Silicon Image SIL3124 Chipset. Even a 1.5 Gb/s connection will be a stunning improvement over USB 2.0!

Quote:
..... user.info kernel: PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd7ee, last bus=2
..... user.info kernel: PCI: Using configuration type 1
..... user.info kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware
..... user.warn kernel: PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
..... user.info kernel: PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/0686] at 00:07.0
..... user.info kernel: PCI: Disabling Via external APIC routing


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:00 pm 
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Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:42 am
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Location: Henry, Virginia, USA
This reply to my own post serves three purposes.

(1) It hopefully will bump my post to the top of the list where it can be seen again.

(2) Since no one has responded may I take it correctly that no one has a response?

(3) Might SATA Silicon Image SIL3124 Chipset compatibility be included in a future iteration of NASLite 2?


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:46 pm 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
I'd say the chances are good that it will work IF it looks like a normal PCI device to the BIOS and the OS. Some devices built onto the MB are funny about being seen.

As far as the data rate of function that is dependent on the chip used, see your link for info about that one.

To be honest you really don't care if it's 1.5Gb or 3.0Gb, no drive available today will come close to saturating the interface for anything other than cache transfers. (All you out there that say but Mike, what about SSD's? They still don't count, to "F"in expensive and they are designed to deliver high I/Os per second and reasonable data transfer rates.)

Give it a shot, what is the worst that happens, you need to install a card instead?

Mike


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:33 am 
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Joined: Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:42 am
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Location: Henry, Virginia, USA
mikeiver1 wrote:
I'd say the chances are good that it will work IF it looks like a normal PCI device to the BIOS and the OS. Some devices built onto the MB are funny about being seen.

... Give it a shot, what is the worst that happens, you need to install a card instead?

Mike

A belated Thanks Mike. The card was, after a firmware flash to non-RAID-functioning (had nothing to do with anything I am sure, but I didn't want RAID functioning anyway), recognized by my BIOS.

I could see evidence of that flash before my eyes as Naslite booted the PC. Alas, Naslite apparently did nothing with that info and the drive connected to that board did not show up within Naslite. Nothing lost, that card is now in an XP machine and doing fine.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:59 am 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Yah, those chips are not real RAID chipsets. IE, they do not have a processor, XOR engine and cache on card. The RAID function is built into the drivers since RAID0, RAID1, and RAID10 are all very light weight as far as processor needs.

There are plenty of other SATA cards out there that will work great though, just check the hardware guide and stick to those. Don't get all hung up with the SATAI and SATAII BS, no drive will saturate a SATAI interface anyway and even Gigabit Ethernet will move only about half the data that a SATAI bus can. Just get a card that works and run with it.

Mike


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PostPosted: Sat Apr 17, 2010 9:47 pm 
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Joined: Sat Apr 17, 2010 9:44 pm
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I bought a pci-e sil3124 sata card from era-adapter.com, it just cost $59.95, support raid 0, 1, 5, 0+1

http://www.era-adapter.com/pciexpress-1 ... -p-59.html


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PostPosted: Sun Apr 18, 2010 12:16 am 
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Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2006 9:05 pm
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Location: Up State NY in the USA!!!!
Still may be a soft RAID card. There are RAID cards that use the likes of say a Sil3124 ship for the physical interface to the drives and then a processor for the XOR, caching, and rebuilding, ETC. The above chip is not a RAID chip though.

Mike


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