Matthew Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > just look at all the bug reports FreeBSD gets related to ATA > chipsets, and we aren't any better since our ATA code is essentially > the same.
I've been having trouble with ATA and FreeBSD for years, so I can confirm this with my own experience. > DMA issues and actual data corruption can occur quite easily. The > fact that data corruption can occur so easily with these ATA > chipsets scares me. If this is true, this might explain a few random crashes on a number of boxes. Things like "panic ffs_valloc: dup alloc" and "panic ufs_dirbad: bad dir" on machines that dont do anything tricky. I honestly had no idea that it was easy to corrupt data on ATA drives. As an aside, Is there any hard data about this kind of corruption? > I say let a 3ware card talk to the SATA drives and let us > communicate with the 3ware card using sane, well understood and well > supported protocols, rather then us trying to keep up with the > billions of different ATA chipsets most of which have hardware that > is so buggy their vendors have to come out with a new chipset rev > every few weeks. I have to say, the 3ware cards have made a believer > out of me. Since you are personally using this solution, I'm thinking I could do a lot worse. I need reliability more than anything (which is why I've gone DragonFly). The way vinum is behaving, maybe I should try this strategy and see how it works? Might I ask the exact model number of the 3ware card(s) you use for RAID 5? If I do things this way I've got to buy two at the same time, and I'd like to be accurate. ;) ------ Dave Hayes - Consultant - Altadena CA, USA - [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> The opinions expressed above are entirely my own <<< It is only knowledge that will destroy bias.