# AM3 Upgrade..need help with sata

## RaceTM

Hi all,

I'm looking in to upgrading my server.  I've always had really bad luck in the past with onboard sata and finding sata controllers that work properly with the linux kernel. Up until last year I was using a mish-mash of different cards with different chipsets, hanging on to the ones that ended up working.  Some of them only had 1 or 2 ports, so it was a waste of space.  Last year I finally ran out of sata ports and had no PCI slots left so I was forced to find a solution.  I finally found a card that works great, it's a 4-port PCI SATA card running the sil3114 chipset.  I bought 4 of them, I have them all in the server right now and it works great.  I'm dreading upgrading because I haven't been able to find any recent boards with more than 3 pci slots, so it looks like I would either have to get rid of a couple of the sata cards and start using some onboard sata, get rid of the X-Fi sound card and start using onboard sound, or likely both.  I'd like to know if anyone has any experiences to share with an AM3 socket board, using the onboard sata in non-raid mode.  Any sata chipsets that play nice with the kernel? Chipsets can always claim to be supported but I would feel better getting first-hand opinions.

----------

## NeddySeagoon

RaceTM,

A few things. Some BIOSes demand you select RAID mode to get AHCI (or non IDE emulation). Just because you select raid mode in the BIOS, it does not mean you have to use it. Your SIL 3114 cards are 150Gbit SATA1 cards. AM3 motherboards will be 3Gbit or 6Gbit SATA.

My M4A78T-E has 5 internal SATA2 SATA ports and 1 eSATA port on board. It uses the AHCI driver and it just works.

I think it has a fake raid mode too but I just ignore that and use kernel raid.

When you use IDE emulation or compatible mode, some the SATA ports disappear and performance is horrible. Its only intended to permit Windows users to install the proper SATA driver before they switch of of IDE/Compatible mode forever. 

I can't say I've ever had problems with on board SATA ... other than trying to use SATA2 drives on a SATA1 controller. They are supposed to fall back to SATA1 but it doesn't always happen.

SATA1 can max out a 33MHz 32bit PCI bus, so SATA controllers in PCI slots really hurt performance.

----------

## BitJam

These folks, Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage, have a lot of experience with multiple SATA drives.  They squeeze 45 SATA drives into a 4-U box.   They use an Addonics four-port card and they also make use of port multipliers that let 5 drives attach to a single SATA port.

----------

## RaceTM

Neddy,

Thanks for the information, I'm a little fuzzy on some of it though.  I'm not familiar with AHCI - are you saying that motherboards which support AHCI will work with a generic AHCI driver? Or is this only true for boards with intel chipsets? What about, say, a newer AM3 board with an nvidia chipset. If this board supports AHCI would you then not need an nvidia chipset driver to properly access the sata devices?

What I'm trying to ensure that I avoid is buying a board, and finding out after the fact that the 'linux support' which was claimed for the chipset is in fact poor, non-existent, or restricted to some proprietary manufacturer driver.  This happened with a rather expensive 4-port promise card I bought a few years back.  I just want to make sure I don't make the same mistake, because this time it will be a much more expensive one.  I want good kernel support, no headaches, and no bad surprises  :Smile: 

Bit Jam, thanks for the link.  Don't think I would be able to fit one of those port multipliers in my system but it was a very nice read.  Very interesting to read how they set things up, and their decisions for using the hardware and software they mention.

----------

## cach0rr0

have a look through the links on the left here - http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/

(e.g. if you're looking at an abit board, click the abit link)

You would be hard pressed to find a sata controller these days that *isn't* supported by the kernel - quite well at that.

----------

## DaggyStyle

well I don't have an amd board, I have a ep43 from gb, also I have 3 hds, what I've done is to plug all 2 (the third one I've added later) hds to the sata sockets with the supplied cables, boot the computer, enter the bios and looked for the sata connection feature, I've switched it for ata to ahci and booted gentoo without any problems.

I've done it with 3 different computers, none of them are amd but all of the have older sockets then am3.

it should work without any problems.

when entering the bios, you should look for a screen similar to this: http://cyforce.org/sites/esxi/bios.jpg

----------

## NeddySeagoon

RaceTM,

Early SATA chip sets had their problems - thats why there are so many kernel drivers.

AHCI is becoming, or has become the standard.

Beware the BIOS compatibility mode - it goes under a lot of different names.

You must not use it as it often forces PIO mode, which is very slow.

As a first step, why not get your on board SATA chipsets going?

That only costs your time and gives you some practice in the setup too.

----------

## jagdpanther

I just received a new mother-board and am looking at the BIOS settings before configuring and compiling a Kernel for my new Gentoo system.

On this Asus P6X58D Premium MB the Marvell 9123 Controller defaults to the "IDE Mode".  Assuming I choose the appropriate Linux 2.6.33.5 configuration options, I GUESS that I should change the BIOS setting to "AHCI Mode"?

----------

## NeddySeagoon

jagdpanther,

Yes. IDE mode is only to allow the installation of Windows AHCI drivers.

----------

## jagdpanther

I switched to "AHCI Mode" in bios and Gentoo installed and is running without issue.  (Also Windoze 7 installed and works -- gotta have that dual boot to play games...)

Thanks for the help.

----------

