[wellylug] USB 3.0 via PCI-e, & SATA HDD enclosures/docks

[Daniel Reurich]

On Tue, 2011-07-05 at 17:10 +1200, David Antliff wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 15:32, Daniel Reurich wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-07-05 at 15:04 +1200, David Antliff wrote:
> >> I also understand that some controllers have problems with
> >> hot-plugging, and I definitely need hot-plugging ability. Perhaps
> >> there's an eSATA PCI or PCI-e card you can recommend that is known to
> >> have Linux support for hot-plugging?
> >>
> > Most recent SATA-300 and later chipsets are fine with it.  If your
> > maninboard has an e-sata port it will be all good.  Just remember to
> > properly unmount the disk before you power it down/unplug it.  If their
> > is a risk it will be hot unplugged without unmounting it then mount it
> > with the "sync" option reduce the risk of FS corruption.
> 
> I'm not sure the mainboard has, or supports eSATA, so I'd be stuck
> with a PCI or PCI-e card I think. I don't have the motherboard ID on
> hand, but I can tell you it's an Athlon 64 3400+, probably a good 4 or
> 5 years old. I doubt it supports hot-plugging of the native SATA
> ports.

'lspci -nn' will provide some useful info about your chipset and
'dmidecode t0 -t1 -t2' 
> 
> Presumably if the Adapter card supports hot-plugging, then Linux takes
> care of the rest via udev?

That's what I'd expect

>  Is it possible for an adapter card to
> support hot-plugging if the mainboard & BIOS do not?

The Bios won't be much involved in hotplug, and as long as the mainboard
has the appropriate slots it will support the features or whatever card
you plug into it.  Bios support is only really involved if you need to
boot off the drive connected to that add-on sata controller

> So the question is, which eSATA adapter cards are suitable? You say
> "most", but I don't really want to take a shot in the dark here :)
> First-hand experience from list readers is what I'm after here.
> 
I'd hazard a guess that any that you can buy on the market today that
claim sata-II or sata-300 (3GB/s) will work fine.  I have some 2 port
highpoint sata Host Bus Adaptors available (Western Digital were
bundling them with 3TB hdd's to ensure that BIOS/Windows would work with
those big disks. 
> 
> > The e-sata cables are different, but most e-sata drives will come with
> > both the cable and a pci-slot bracket to patch it to internal sata
> > ports.
> >
> >> Would you (or anyone) happen to be able to recommend a good (reliable)
> >> eSATA external "dock"?
> >
> > Sure.  Do you want just a dock you can plug the bare disks in, or do you
> > want fully enclose caddies.
> 
> 
> Ideally something to simply plug bare disks into, perhaps something like this:
> 
> http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=381917
> 
> Fundamentally, I want to be able to walk up to the machine, un-mount
> the disk, remove it, slot in a replacement, mount it, and walk away.
> Then cron/scripts will take over and begin the backup (or restoration)
> automatically, until I revisit it the next day. I'll have a number of
> disks, so I don't really want enclosed caddies for all of them, so a
> dock suits best I think.
> 
That should work fine.  I've used some of vantec's caddies and they are
good enough, and that's what I'd probably go for in that situation. 


-- 
Daniel Reurich.

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