Why TWO SATA Controllers?

[michaelnel 0]

I bought an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard a couple days ago and am planning on installing it this weekend, replacing an Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi/AP board.

 

I am curious about something... the Intel board has two SATA controllers... one is the Intel ICH7 and the other is a Marvell 88SE6145. The Marvell one is not supported unless running the 2.6.20-rc1-git5 kernel.

 

Why have two SATA controllers? Just for more capacity? I have one IDE DVD/RW, two large SATA drives that I currently use under SUSE 10.1 in a software RAID1 configuration, and three SCSI drives. I boot off the SCSI, the RAID is just used to back up to.

 

I think I should be able to hook the DVD/RW and the two SATA drives to the ICH7 ports and be good to go, without using the Marvell one at all... correct?

 

 

[jmmijo 1]

Correct, capacity is why, the onboard ICH7 will support up to (4)Four sata drives and I beleive the same amount for that Marvell controller.

 

However, nothing says you have to enable the Marvell controller, you most likely can disable that device in the CMOS Setup.

[michaelnel 0]

Thanks, that's probably what I'll do.

 

The reason I am changing from the Asus is that due to the Intel 965 chipset on it, it only supports the IDE DVD on the Jmicron controller, and unfortunately the Jmicron support in all but the very latest kernels is flaky. If I try to upgrade from SUSE 10.1 to 10.2 using the DVD, it will boot from the DVD fine but as soon as the install starts it can't find the DVD so the upgrade bombs.

 

There is a boot parameter "insmod=pata_jmicron" that gets it a little further, but then that bombs too. The Intel 965 chipset doesn't seem to be a good choice for a Linux box.

 

I'm also sick of Asus's slow as molasses support website (try 15 minutes to download a tiny BIOS file) and total disregard for its Linux user base.

[jmmijo 1]

I've noticed that too with Asus, some of the mirrors however work much better for me so I try the US first then move to Global and so on....

 

Good luck with your new hardware

[michaelnel 0]

I converted to the Intel board Saturday morning. Everything works great!

 

[jmmijo 1]

Glad to hear that, nice work