ATA mirroring solution required

[Thomas Spreng]

hello,

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 10:47:36PM +0100, Chris Smith wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Got a bit of a sticky situation.  I have a bog standard Compaq AP230
> workstation with two IDE channels and 3 devices so far (two CDROM
> devices and a hard disk).  I want to add a second disk as a software
> RAID1 mirror of the primary disk.  I know how to do this in FreeBSD so
> thats not a problem - the hardware side is.
> 
> The only available IDE port I have would be shared with the existing
> hard disk i.e two hard disks in RAID1 on the primary IDE chain.  AFAIK
> this is bad for performance reasons.
 
yes you are right. Its very recommended to have only one disk per
IDE/ATA channel since it can only deal with one request to one device at the
time.

> Drives are both Seagate 7200rpm 40Gb ATA100 and the controller supports
> ATA100 also.  Running 4.8-STABLE.
> 
> Where do I go?
> 
> I was looking for a secondary controller to give each drive it's own
> channel on the controller (ie a promise/HPT one) but have no experience
> with these under FreeBSD.  Can someone recommend one if possible that
> works flawlessly or an alternative solution?
 
I have a very similar setup with a vinum raid, using 4 drives on 2
Promise ATA100 (the cheapest one) controllers. They work flawless.
Just check the hardware notes on freebsd.org. There are several IDE/ATA
controllers that are supported under 4.8-STABLE.

> Solutions must be cheap i.e under 50 UKP as the wife will kill me for
> spending any more ;-)
> 
> Cheers all

cheers,
	tom