On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 17:10, Andrew Lau wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I'm stuck at a crossroads right now. My main Athlon 1.2 Ghz workstation > with a Promise UDMA5/100 controller is probably on its last legs before > retirement (its given me 3 years of loyal service -- looking to squeeze > out 2 more). Seeing as it needs a new harddrive anyway, I'm really > wondering whether paying an extra $20-$25 per harddrive and an another > $70 for a Silicon Image Serial ATA Controller [1] is worth it. LKML > posts also seem to give the general impression that overall SATA driver > support under Linux is still preliminary.
My parents wanted a new computer so I used them as guinea pigs for a software raided SATA Gentoo install. It had its moments but it is running fine now. For the best "bang for your buck", I'd recommend sticking with PATA, (2 cheap, smaller drives) and software raiding them under Linux. The ability to mix and match the raid types per partition is a bonus, and as most on-board/cheap raid is actually software raid (with poorly supported Linux drivers) the only loss is raid performance in Windows (if you're dual-booting). Cheers, Malcolm V. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
