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To: Martin Cracauer <cracauer@cons.org>
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Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Non-raid PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports?
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Martin Cracauer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> is there any PCIe SATA controller with 8 ports that has decent FreeBSD
> drivers, including NCQ, and decent performance on the level of the ICH
> or Nvidia onboard ports?
>   

As far as i know, there's no NCQ for the ata(4) driver, so you can only 
use SCSI TCQ and NCQ on a true hardware controller like Areca.
I think you need either a motherboard with 8 onboard connectors, 
multiple PCI/PCIe cards or a hardware controller like HighPoint 
RocketRaid 2320 PCI-e with 8 ports. This last one is quite affordable 
and has quite good driver support i think.

> I don't need hardware RAID.  I suppose I can use an 8-port Areca as a
> dumb controller, but that's kinda wastish.
>   

Well, an Areca might give you the flexibility to use true RAID and even 
on single disks you can benefit from increased performance due to 
request reordering and the onboard buffercache. Be aware that any 
controller with write-back cache offers a potential dataloss risk, 
without the use of a battery backup unit (BBU).

Also, if you need performance, why would you want to use an Areca as a 
normal controller, why not pick RAID0 or RAID5? Do you really need 8 
seperate disks?

- Veronica