[mythtv-users] esata drives - experience?

[mikp]

On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 07:06:42 -0700
Yan Seiner <yan at seiner.com> wrote:

> Anyone have experience with esata drives and port multipliers?
> 
> I have a pile of 250 GB and 300 GB IDE drives, and I've been toying with 
> the idea of converting them to SATA, then sticking them into an 
> enclosure, and plugging the whole mess into an esata port on my server.
> 
> Bingo, an extra 750 GB of storage (if I do RAID-5) or 1.1 TB if I do LVM.
> 
> So far, I've found this:
> 
> http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?category=eSATA_Bridge_Adapters
> http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?product=SATAII-5Port&detail=yes
> http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?product=PM3726&detail=yes
> http://www.caloptic.com/cgi-bin/quikstore.cgi?product=SATAII-5Port-H&detail=yes
> 
> They all use the same SIL chipset for the multiplier.
> 
> Then use one of these for each drive:
> 
> http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=104&cp_id=10407&cs_id=1040701&p_id=327&seq=1&format=2
> 
> The enclosure I have.  So for something like $130, I can add about 1 TB 
> to my system.  Not a bad deal - if it works.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 

I had a similar situation of trying to use my spare ide drives in a seperate hard
drive enclosure (with eSATA port multiplier PMP) and connecting to my pc with
eSATA cable. I wanted to isolate the noise of the 4 drives by putting the HD
box in a closet and using a 2 meter eSATA cable to connect to the pc.

Both ide-SATA converters i tried were problematic. One used JMicron and
the other SilImage chips, but both did not always recognize the drive
properly, especially if you used more than one at a time. So i gave up on using 
the ide drives with SATA conveters.

What i have been using for 4 months with no problems is the CFI 4-bay eSATA
port multiplier (in my closet for noise isolation) connected with eSATA
cable to the pc. This enclosure has a backplane, so the SATA drives just
slide into the backplane connectors for power and SATA (no cables needed). 
Currently it has 2 Samsung 500GB and 2 WD TB drives.

The CFI has a SI 3726 port multiplier chip and comes with a PCIe eSATA port card
with a SI 3132 chip. PMP support for these chips started with kernel 2.6.24.
There is a PMP support patch for kernel 2.6.23. The SI chips seem to work
the best (check linux.ide development mailing list).  

I have also been able to successfully plug the CFI PMP box into motherboards using 
JMicron 361 and 363 eSATA chips. PMP support is also avilable with the Intel
ICH9R. If the linux PMP driver does not support the chipset it will only recognize
one drive not 4 drives.

http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/cfi/4043pm/