On Jun 1, 2009, at 5:57 PM, Benjamin Smith <lists at benjamindsmith.com> wrote: > Tired of "little problems" trying to keep 7 drives working in an old > desktop computer, I'm considering an external SATA drive enclosure > with a controller card based on the Sil3124. > http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=152 > > I'm a bit concerned about long-term support, namely that the > company's driver page only lists drivers through RedHat 4. > http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=27&cat=3 > > Does anybody else have experience with this controller? How has it > been for you? > > If you have experience with an external SATA enclosure(s), what did > you use and how did it work for you? I use the Dell MD1000 enclosures with good results, but they only certify certain drives with their enclosures and they may have tweaked firmware, so open market drives will have variable results. Their drive prices are good too if you have a quote generated they are 20-30% off their web site's list price. The real key is the controller though. Get one that can do hardware RAID1/10, 5/50, 6/60, if it can do both SATA and SAS even better and get a battery backed write-back cache, the bigger the better, 256MB good, 512MB better, 1GB best. -Ross