Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an improved
chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable features, like
the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with individual
drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work with
port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I have read
reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there anything
with similar features that is more robust?

-- 
W

In article <oPidncL929ihxZ3QnZ2dnUVZ5hidnZ2d@giganews.com>,
 "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an improved
> chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable features, like
> the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with individual
> drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work with
> port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I have read
> reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there anything
> with similar features that is more robust?

Don't you want to add "and is supported on MacOS X"  And how would the 
soft RAID features benefit you?  MacOS X uses Disk Utility's soft RAID 
setup and I'm guessing that this may not use said features, so they'd 
have to be part of MacOS's disk drivers.

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

"Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
news:vilain-98D973.21464208122010@news.individual.net...
> In article <oPidncL929ihxZ3QnZ2dnUVZ5hidnZ2d@giganews.com>,
>  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an improved
> > chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable features,
like
> > the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with individual
> > drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work
with
> > port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I have
read
> > reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there anything
> > with similar features that is more robust?
>
> Don't you want to add "and is supported on MacOS X"  And how would the
> soft RAID features benefit you?  MacOS X uses Disk Utility's soft RAID
> setup and I'm guessing that this may not use said features, so they'd
> have to be part of MacOS's disk drivers.

I'm not interested in the soft RAID in any case.   I am interested in an
eSATA chipset that:

1) Won't randomly lose attached devices.

2) Explicitly supports hotswapping

-- 
W

In article <au-dnUMAdpIV4JzQnZ2dnUVZ5qGdnZ2d@giganews.com>,
 "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:

> "Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:vilain-98D973.21464208122010@news.individual.net...
> > In article <oPidncL929ihxZ3QnZ2dnUVZ5hidnZ2d@giganews.com>,
> >  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an improved
> > > chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable features,
> like
> > > the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with individual
> > > drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work
> with
> > > port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I have
> read
> > > reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there anything
> > > with similar features that is more robust?
> >
> > Don't you want to add "and is supported on MacOS X"  And how would the
> > soft RAID features benefit you?  MacOS X uses Disk Utility's soft RAID
> > setup and I'm guessing that this may not use said features, so they'd
> > have to be part of MacOS's disk drivers.
> 
> I'm not interested in the soft RAID in any case.   I am interested in an
> eSATA chipset that:
> 
> 1) Won't randomly lose attached devices.
> 
> 2) Explicitly supports hotswapping

Again, you'll need support in the OS for that.  How would MacOS X know 
the difference between an eSATA disk with this chip set vs. others which 
aren't hot-swappable?  Currently when MacOS is running, you just drag a 
disk to the trash and it's unmounted.  With an eSATA dock, you pull that 
drive and plug in another.  It spins up and is recognized by the OS.  

How is that different from what you want from these unsupported disks?

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]

"Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
news:vilain-50CB57.20043009122010@news.individual.net...
> In article <au-dnUMAdpIV4JzQnZ2dnUVZ5qGdnZ2d@giganews.com>,
>  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
>
> > "Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
> > news:vilain-98D973.21464208122010@news.individual.net...
> > > In article <oPidncL929ihxZ3QnZ2dnUVZ5hidnZ2d@giganews.com>,
> > >  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an
improved
> > > > chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable
features,
> > like
> > > > the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with
individual
> > > > drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work
> > with
> > > > port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I
have
> > read
> > > > reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there
anything
> > > > with similar features that is more robust?
> > >
> > > Don't you want to add "and is supported on MacOS X"  And how would the
> > > soft RAID features benefit you?  MacOS X uses Disk Utility's soft RAID
> > > setup and I'm guessing that this may not use said features, so they'd
> > > have to be part of MacOS's disk drivers.
> >
> > I'm not interested in the soft RAID in any case.   I am interested in an
> > eSATA chipset that:
> >
> > 1) Won't randomly lose attached devices.
> >
> > 2) Explicitly supports hotswapping
>
> Again, you'll need support in the OS for that.  How would MacOS X know
> the difference between an eSATA disk with this chip set vs. others which
> aren't hot-swappable?  Currently when MacOS is running, you just drag a
> disk to the trash and it's unmounted.  With an eSATA dock, you pull that
> drive and plug in another.  It spins up and is recognized by the OS.
>
> How is that different from what you want from these unsupported disks?

What you describe is the behavior I want:

1) Plug the eSATA drive into card and it comes into Snow Leopard
automatically.
2) Dismount Volume in Snow Leopard
3) Unplug eSATA drive
4) Get new eSATA drive and loop back to step 1)

Under Windows and Linux, with some eSATA chipsets, when you get to step 4)
and loop back, the controller will refuse to see a new drive.   I have
always read that hotswap support in the eSATA chipset is required, and many
of the early eSATA chipsets do not support hotswap capability.   So you can
remove the drive from the OS safely but you cannot get a new drive
recognized.

So yes obviously you need OS functionality to support eSATA, and you need OS
functionality to support removal of a Volume while the OS is running.
MacOS has both of those.

Are you saying that under MacOS the eSATA chipset never needs to have any
support for hotswap capability in order to recognize additional drives after
the initial Volume dismount?   How did Mac OS manage that trick?

-- 
W

In article <R4udnfSRQM7SVZzQnZ2dnUVZ5judnZ2d@giganews.com>,
 "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:

> "Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
> news:vilain-50CB57.20043009122010@news.individual.net...
> > In article <au-dnUMAdpIV4JzQnZ2dnUVZ5qGdnZ2d@giganews.com>,
> >  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
> >
> > > "Michael Vilain" <vilain@NOspamcop.net> wrote in message
> > > news:vilain-98D973.21464208122010@news.individual.net...
> > > > In article <oPidncL929ihxZ3QnZ2dnUVZ5hidnZ2d@giganews.com>,
> > > >  "W" <persistentone@spamarrest.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Does anyone know of an eSATA PCI-X and PCIe adapter that has an
> improved
> > > > > chipset over Silicon Image 3124?   This chipset has desirable
> features,
> > > like
> > > > > the ability to create soft RAID sets, or alternately act with
> individual
> > > > > drives as hotswap non-RAID drives.   It also has the ability to work
> > > with
> > > > > port multipliers on multi-drive enclosures.    The bad thing is I
> have
> > > read
> > > > > reports that the 3124 chipset randomly loses drives.   Is there
> anything
> > > > > with similar features that is more robust?
> > > >
> > > > Don't you want to add "and is supported on MacOS X"  And how would the
> > > > soft RAID features benefit you?  MacOS X uses Disk Utility's soft RAID
> > > > setup and I'm guessing that this may not use said features, so they'd
> > > > have to be part of MacOS's disk drivers.
> > >
> > > I'm not interested in the soft RAID in any case.   I am interested in an
> > > eSATA chipset that:
> > >
> > > 1) Won't randomly lose attached devices.
> > >
> > > 2) Explicitly supports hotswapping
> >
> > Again, you'll need support in the OS for that.  How would MacOS X know
> > the difference between an eSATA disk with this chip set vs. others which
> > aren't hot-swappable?  Currently when MacOS is running, you just drag a
> > disk to the trash and it's unmounted.  With an eSATA dock, you pull that
> > drive and plug in another.  It spins up and is recognized by the OS.
> >
> > How is that different from what you want from these unsupported disks?
> 
> What you describe is the behavior I want:
> 
> 1) Plug the eSATA drive into card and it comes into Snow Leopard
> automatically.
> 2) Dismount Volume in Snow Leopard
> 3) Unplug eSATA drive
> 4) Get new eSATA drive and loop back to step 1)
> 
> Under Windows and Linux, with some eSATA chipsets, when you get to step 4)
> and loop back, the controller will refuse to see a new drive.   I have
> always read that hotswap support in the eSATA chipset is required, and many
> of the early eSATA chipsets do not support hotswap capability.   So you can
> remove the drive from the OS safely but you cannot get a new drive
> recognized.
> 
> So yes obviously you need OS functionality to support eSATA, and you need OS
> functionality to support removal of a Volume while the OS is running.
> MacOS has both of those.
> 
> Are you saying that under MacOS the eSATA chipset never needs to have any
> support for hotswap capability in order to recognize additional drives after
> the initial Volume dismount?   How did Mac OS manage that trick?

I'm guessing about this, so take this with several Kg of NaCl.  On 
Solaris, last I looked (2.6 and 7) the hardware had to specifically 
support hot swap AND Solaris had to be told through various ways that 
the disk was being removed and another installed.  Several of the Sun 
enclosures  (A5000 RAID array and RM6? HW RAID array) had software that 
removed the disk from service and the hot swap feature coupled with the 
drivers allowed for new disks to be recognized.  Most of this was 
required because Solaris only did the device configuration of data 
structures on a special "reconfigure" boot.  So, that feature had to be 
recreated.  Note that this all goes away if you use a Network Appliance 
box.  The volume created by the box is NFS mounted and the OS in the 
NetApp reports it's size.  I think all you need do is another disk to 
the array and it reports the new size.  SANs were just coming out when I 
left the Sun world, so I can't comment on how they work.

I think MacOS was built with the idea that disk would come and go.  In 
MacOS 9 and earlier, there were removable disks like Zip, Jazz, and 
other cartridge drives.  You had to install a special INIT in the System 
folder to get MacOS to recognize these disks.  I don't recall if the 
hard drives could be removed and added off the SCSI chain while MacOS 
was running.  I seemed to recall that it only queried the chain on boot 
or when you ran a SCSI INQ command in software.  With MacOS X, that all 
changed.  IDE, FW, and eSATA disks used a different bus, so having the 
OS do a bus scan and build disk datastructures is handled by a Disk 
Arbitration daemon (/usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd).  Note that MacOS X uses 
the "each disk is a filesystem" for Finder compatibility as well as 
/Volumes mount points.  Once the OS is setup to allow for dynamic device 
configuration, recognizing devices as they're added via USB or FW (e.g. 
a scanner, iphone, disk, camera, etc.) becomes easy.  

Mainframes probably didn't do this much.  You had drive DASD bays full 
or partially full, tape drives, and communications processors for bisync 
terminals.  So the OS device structures could be "sysgened" and fixed 
into the running monitor.  IIRC, the distributed BSD kernel came with 
all devices built into it which you booted off of, configured for your 
hardware (disk, tape, serial terminals, printers, and yes, card 
readers), and built your own custom version of the kernel to save memory 
and disk space.

-- 
DeeDee, don't press that button!  DeeDee!  NO!  Dee...
[I filter all Goggle Groups posts, so any reply may be automatically ignored]