Forum.HaveTheKnowHow.com

Hi

So, I recycled an old/ unused pc to be my server. All appeared to go well. Have set up OS on a CF card (slow, but works fine, and is silent). Set up trial data drives using small SATA drives - all ok. Ordered a new 2 tb drive with the intention of installing into server, and copying files from 2tb nas onto the server followed by recycling the 2tb drive from nas into the server.

New drive arrived, but is sata 3 and is not recognised by my old pc (only has sata1). I've tried setting jumpers on the drive, but this appears to limit the sata3 drive to sata 2 performance.

I have juggled things around by copying data from the nas into my pc, and have successfully inserted the 2tb nas drive into my server by using the jumper settings to limit speed to 1.5Gbs.

I intend to buy a pci controller card to insert into the server that hopefully will solve this problem anyone know of a cheap pci (not pci-e) card that will play nicely with ubuntu 10.4 and work with a wd 2tb sata 3 drive (WD20EARX)?

thanks
mike

Hi Mike

I got one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Port-SATA-Serial-IDE-ATA-RAID-Controller-PCI-Card-UK-/280414578300?pt=UK_Computing_ComputerComponents_InterfaceCards&hash=item414a02e67c a couple of years ago for my first FreeNAS box and is now installed in my Ubuntu server, although it is not bootable it works fine for adding drives and it is only SATA 1, it worked well enough with SATA 2 drives, don't know about SATA 3 drives, giving the a wide birth at the moment, sticking with my trusty Samsung 2TB drive for now.

Hope this helps....

Andy

#hi Andy

I have ordered a similar card with 4 sata ports (no IDE) off flea bay, hopefully it will work....

thanks
Mike

Hey Mike, any chance of a link to the card you bought please.

Andy

Sure

the card I bought is here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/260876763459? ... 398wt_1139

I have made progress with this card, but have not yet got things fully working (due to my lack of technical know how).

The raid card above is based on the SI3114 chipset, and allegedly can do RAID 0,1,5,10, JBOD/Concatenation or simply act as additional SATA ports. Card has installed fine, and does recognise my 2TB SATA3 drive (my onboard SATA1 did not), however the card only runs at SATA1 speeds (ie 1.5GBS).

I'm now having difficulty setting the drives up within webmin. If I use the card simply to add more ports, I can see all attached drives, and have formatted the 'new' SATA3 drive, however I tried to mount it pointing at my /media folder (same as I have done with my SATA2 drive) thinking this would increase the available space for my /media folder from 2TB to 4TB, however the mount fails saying that the /media mount is already allocated (presumably by my SATA2 drive).

If I try to use the RAID side of the card by concatenating the two 2TB disks then when ubuntu launches the mount fails - unfortunately when this happens my log-in via webmin also fails so I cannot get in to see what's happening and my understanding of command line linux is too poor to address from the server itself.

Next step will be to revert back to 'old' set-up, unmount all storage drives, save and then go back into webmin with no mounted drives, but with the two 2TB storage drives concatenated via the raid card (4TB) and see if I can create a new mount to the /media folder.

If anyone can point out any easier ways I'd be grateful of their guidance/assistance.

mike