[geeks] Cheap Adaptec SATA/SAS RAID controllers announced

[Shannon Hendrix]

On May 16, 2008, at 11:20 , Sridhar Ayengar wrote:

> First of all, isn't a x16 slot that doesn't accept x8 cards broken,  
> according to the PCI-express standard?

Maybe... but then video slots have been treated differently than  
others for a long time now.

For example, AMD CPUs have special support for AGP and PCIe video cards.

Maybe on some systems that affects compatibility?

> Also, is this card actually hardware RAID?  Adaptec cards tend to be  
> a bit of a mixed bag, with the low-end cards having their RAID  
> functions running on the system CPU through the use of a heavyweight  
> driver. (Fake RAID)

It appears to be real hardware RAID, at least Adaptec says so:

For basic RAID functionality that is independent of the host and  
operating system, plus high bandwidth for I/O applications in a  
controller designed for entry-level storage solutions, choose  
Adaptec.  The Adaptec RAID 2405 is equipped with the enhanced  
reliability of hardware RAID 0, 1 and 10, industry-leading dual core  
RAID on Chip (ROC) and 128MB of DDR2 cache.

-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."