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I'm using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP (Sil3112a controller - same as the A7N8X, correct?), with two WD2000JD 200GB SATA hdds w/o too many issues.
AFAIK, the ICH5 SATA controller is not supported under the 2.4.21/22 production kernels. However, initial support is available in the 2.6 kernels from what I've read.
A few issues that I've encountered while using this box and the SI bus:
1) HW Raid Support is not available (unless you use Suse 8.x, RH 8.x, or another older version of a distro that SI has posted binary drivers for).
2) Max speed I've obtained from these drives using hdparm -Tt is: Timing buffer-cache reads: 3928 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1964.98 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.03 seconds = 55.37 MB/sec
2a) Kernel 2.6.0-0 dropped the disk read perf to ~30 MB/sec.
3) I have to force-enable DMA on these drives using the /etc/sysconfig/hardware file. Using hdparm -d1X66 is a "pot shot" at best and caused me hard lockups at least 50% of the time unless I was in single user mode (init 5 raised the lockup rate to >90%).
4) MD raid support using these drives is flaky at best. An improper shutdown would require a rebuilding of each array manually, and often caused the drives to throw timeout errors upon reboot. Although, I'm now seeing "lost interrupt" errors after reverting to a non-raid setup, so I may have a hardware issue. About to test the fault tolerance of the reiserfs w/o raid on the Sil3112 bus now.
That is my experience so far. IMO, SATA in Linux is not ready for prime-time, unfortunately (at least when using consumer-level hardware).
-- Best regards, Brian Curtis
I wish I would have known some of this a couple of weeks ago when I built almost the same system w/ seagate drives. The Gigabyte GA-8KNXP rocks! Runs like a champ but the proud new owner wanted xp. Oh well. I also noticed on the board that the 6 phase power conditioner DOES NOT work with Antec conditioning power supplies. There is something with the phasing of the power. The solution is to remove the cool little on board conditioner. Might not work with some of the other conditioning power supplies either. Haven't had a chance to try any of them yet. Hope I didn't hijack the thread. Thought I would try to save someone a headache. will