[CentOS] e-SATA card well supported by Linux (CentOS) with built-in drivers and that supports hot plug

Wed Jul 23 20:19:02 UTC 2008
Filipe Brandenburger <filbranden at gmail.com>

Hi,

I'm looking for a good e-SATA card, preferrently one that is supported
by Linux with built-in drivers (no need to compile the modules from
the vendor), or at least that the vendor's drivers are packaged with
dkms or something similar that makes it easy on kernel upgrades.

It's essential that the card supports hot-plugging, because we want to
use it to plug backup drives and have them rotated. We are testing one
e-SATA drive from LaCie.

We tested the Adaptec eSATA II RAID 1225SA, but just to get the module
to compile right it was a huge PITA, and we still haven't gotten it to
recognize our LaCie drive (we're still not sure why). Instead of
spending more time making that s*#t work, I would rather buy another
one, but then I would try to get one that works out-of-the box.

I don't need that the card supports RAID, it really does not matter to me.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Filipe