# Are PCI-SATA controller cards supported under FreeBSD?



## MorgothV8 (Jan 7, 2009)

Welcome
I have some kind of problem, and may someone of You can help me.

I have old computer with K8TNEO mainboard and I bought new HDD Samsung 640 Gb 7200 RPM SATA 2 (300)
This mainboard has both IDE controlers and SATA controlers. IDE works fine, but new SATA drive isnt't detected

I've found on net that this mainboard has problems with SATA controller (being both IDE and SATA on the same south-bridge)
I've tried all possible: both SATA cahnnels, all jumper settings on HDD, all options in BISO but none helps
Always: "no device" at proble level (in BIOS POST)

I've read also that SATA2 causes problem with this VIA controller on K8TNEO -> it doesn't support SATA2 mode
There were solutions:
1. Jumpers on HDD -> not working
2. BIOS settings with RAID etc -> not working
3. Try PCI-SATA controller card:

I'm about to buy one such card, but it comes with drivers for M$ but not for FreeBSD (as usual)
My question is:

**** Can FreeBSD 7.1 detect and use SATA discs connected through PCI-SATA controllers (specially MiNT one) ****

Abybody tried using such a device (PCI-SATA controller0 on FreeBSD
I found that promise PCI-SATA card works, but this one which I can buy is MiNT...
Does this card need really special drivers or it is "standard" and any such card can be easily detedted by FreeBSD?

Thanks


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (Jan 7, 2009)

Rumor of data loss on *some* non-promise chipsets.  You'd best
research the chipset on the pci card for reliability as well
as freebsd support.
.........
the promise tx4 installed here and worked fine.


----------



## MorgothV8 (Jan 8, 2009)

This "data loss" occured for me.
Tried MiNT, after some minutes of stable working, it simply disconnects ad4 from bus and device /dev/ad4 disappears 

But I got it for few days to "try", now I will not buy it.
Today borrow 500Gb SATA disc (Seagate) with possible jumper setting to SATA150, I will try it in the evening...


----------



## cbrace (Feb 26, 2010)

I have an Initio SATA PCI card which is recognized by lspci, but doesn't show up in dmesg, so I guess it isn't supported. I'd be interested in recommendations for a SATA card that *is* supported by FreeBSD.


----------



## jailed (Feb 26, 2010)

Hello cbrace,

I bought a VIA pci card and it's really bad. I couldn't use it. The thread is below.
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=10557

Then I asked for a working one on forum,
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=11552

mav@ suggested me SiI3124 chipsets for PCI/PCI-x and Intel chipsets for onboard controllers.

I couldn't found a PCI card with SiI3124 on my location. I'm still searching.

Maybe you can try it. I've no experience about it. If I found and try it, I can share my experiences.

Have a good day.


----------



## ondra_knezour (Feb 27, 2010)

```
atapci1: <SiI SiI 3512 SATA150 controller> port 0x3000-0x3007,0x3008-0x300b,0x3010-0x3017,0x3018-0x301b,0x3020-0x302f mem 0xf7ef0000-0xf7ef01ff irq 28 at device 1.0 on pci1
```
 works on 
	
	



```
FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE #0: Mon Jun  8 22:16:18 CEST 2009 /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
```
 couple of months without problems.

Supported devices are available in release notes to your FreeBSD version, for example http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/hardware.html#DISK


----------



## jailed (Feb 27, 2010)

ondra_knezour said:
			
		

> ```
> atapci1: <SiI SiI 3512 SATA150 controller> port 0x3000-0x3007,0x3008-0x300b,0x3010-0x3017,0x3018-0x301b,0x3020-0x302f mem 0xf7ef0000-0xf7ef01ff irq 28 at device 1.0 on pci1
> ```
> works on
> ...



Hello,

Do you get any read/write dma errors on this chipset? How is the performance on load? I found a 3512 on ebay after your post. I will buy it if it's really good.


----------



## ondra_knezour (Feb 27, 2010)

jailed said:
			
		

> Do you get any read/write dma errors on this chipset?



Didn't see any 



			
				jailed said:
			
		

> How is the performance on load?



There are two disks now

```
ad4: 953869MB <WDC WD10EAVS-00D7B0 01.01A01> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 1430799MB <SAMSUNG HD154UI 1AG01118> at ata3-master SATA150
```

No performance tests has been done, those disks works as cheap storage only, but copy of almost 1 TB data from one to another took only little more than 5 hours, giving little more than 55 MB/s. If I recall correctly, transfer speed seen in mc was always over 40 MB/s during this copy.


----------



## jailed (Feb 27, 2010)

1 TB is good for me. 40MB/s is also. I have a VIA chip, I'm limiting transfer speed even to 1mbit/s and it's really bad. I have tested on Linux too, and same. I'm searching a sata card for my backup server. Speed is actually not important.

Thank you for your reply. I think I will buy a new one as yours.


----------

