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Date:      Thu, 3 Jun 2010 13:40:25 -0700
From:      Jeremy Chadwick <freebsd@jdc.parodius.com>
To:        Ulrich Drolshagen <u.drolshagen@t-online.de>
Cc:        freebsd-stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Support for ICH sata raid controler
Message-ID:  <20100603204025.GA17762@icarus.home.lan>
In-Reply-To: <201006032136.46625.u.drolshagen@t-online.de>
References:  <201006032136.46625.u.drolshagen@t-online.de>

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On Thu, Jun 03, 2010 at 09:36:46PM +0200, Ulrich Drolshagen wrote:
> we are about to aquire a new Primergy TX150. I can not find any information on 
> support of the Intel ICHx sata raid controller in the Hardware Notes of 8-
> Stable. Does anybody know?

All revisions of the ICHxx series are supported (ICH3 to ICH10 I can
confirm).

If you plan on using the RAID functionality of the chipset (otherwise
known as "MatrixRAID" or "Matrix Storage Technology"), don't bother[1].

Instead, enable AHCI on the controller (usually in the system BIOS) and
use one of FreeBSD (software/OS-level) RAID/RAID-like implementations
such as gmirror, gvinum, or ZFS.

I'd also recommend using ahci.ko instead of ataahci.ko for AHCI support.
achi.ko provides a AHCI/SATA-to-CAM translation layer (which means you
gain benefits like NCQ; disks show up as adaX), while ataahci.ko (the
default) does not use CAM (and does not support NCQ; disks show up as
adX).

You can use ahci.ko by placing 'ahci_load="yes"' in /boot/loader.conf,
or when booting a FreeBSD installation medium, dropping to the loader
prompt and typing "load ahci" then "boot".

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Matrix_RAID

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |




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