Comments on: Supermicro http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/supermicro/ He has another more popular diary. This one is more general. Fri, 18 May 2012 19:55:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Michael Powell http://dan.langille.org/2010/02/14/supermicro/#comment-407 Michael Powell Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:53:02 +0000 http://dan.langille.org/?p=271#comment-407 I have seen reports of trouble from time to time with people trying to use SATA DVD/CD burners and FreeBSD. Although using an old PATA will be known to work, it is worth an effort to move in the direction of fixing any SATA DVD/CD drive issues rather than moving back to older tech. You may also not be in the 'problem' category either; you may be lucky and it "Just Works". YMMV About the controller: WOW! I have been looking for something such as this for some time. The Areca products I've looked at are good kit, but a little on the pricey side for non work-related servers. While I'm sure there are bigger/faster/more expensive models available (you know this I'm sure), this is a lot of controller for the buck! Must have at least x4, and preferably x8 slot support wrt PCIe. An x1 slot only has 500MB/s bandwidth and is too slow creating a bottleneck choke point (I'm also sure you know this too). x8 cards are usually in the expensive category and x4 for use in a home server is perfectly adequate. I would be very interested to hear reports on how well this card works for you, once you've done the 'dirty work'. :-) Mike Powell aka qbit -73- I have seen reports of trouble from time to time with people trying to use SATA DVD/CD burners and FreeBSD. Although using an old PATA will be known to work, it is worth an effort to move in the direction of fixing any SATA DVD/CD drive issues rather than moving back to older tech. You may also not be in the ‘problem’ category either; you may be lucky and it “Just Works”. YMMV

About the controller: WOW! I have been looking for something such as this for some time. The Areca products I’ve looked at are good kit, but a little on the pricey side for non work-related servers. While I’m sure there are bigger/faster/more expensive models available (you know this I’m sure), this is a lot of controller for the buck!

Must have at least x4, and preferably x8 slot support wrt PCIe. An x1 slot only has 500MB/s bandwidth and is too slow creating a bottleneck choke point (I’m also sure you know this too). x8 cards are usually in the expensive category and x4 for use in a home server is perfectly adequate.

I would be very interested to hear reports on how well this card works for you, once you’ve done the ‘dirty work’. :-)

Mike Powell aka qbit

-73-

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