(SOLVED) Adding SATA III card to a SATA II motherboard.

[jwt873]

I picked up a 120 GB SATA 3 solid state drive...   My current 18 month old motherboard only supports SATA 2

I'm considering adding an adapter card that supports SATA 3 so I can use the solid state drive at its full potential.    (Similar to the one in this link) -->  http://www.byteccusa.com/product/xP-card/BT-PES321i/BT-PES321i.htm

I notice that the site recommends Windows and has a driver disk included with the card....    Does anyone know if the card will work on a Linux system.   Or better yet, has anyone successfully added a SATA 3 card to their system and if so, which one?


Thanks in advance......
Jim

[T6]

the card itself is just a pcix adapter for a sata 3 controller

do you know what controller is used on that card?

what card is it?

the link to the similar card seems to be using a marvel mv91 controller

http://www.marvell.com/storage/system-solutions/sata-controllers.jsp

now, if the other card uses the same controller i only see problems in linux when using it on raid mode

[jwt873]

Thanks for the quick reply...

I did a bit of searching and can't find exactly which SATA controller chip Bytecc uses..   However, I'm going to buy the card in person where I can look in the package and read which chip it uses...    I'm not doing RAID, so I guess I'll give it a try if it's a Marvel mv91

[jwt873]

Well...For anyone else interested if this card, (or one like it) will work...  It does have a Marvell controller chip and the card installed just fine.  Unlike Windows, no additional driver's are necessary.  Below is what is shown in the hardware identification utility of the PCLOS control center:

Code:

Identification
Vendor: ‎Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
Description: ‎88SE9123 PCIe SATA 6.0 Gb/s controller
Media class: ‎SATA controller

[T6]

so, a good experience?

don't forget to mark this as {SOLVED}

something i didn't mentioned about the card is that is complicated on most mainboards to boot from those extra cards, normally bios doesn't offer them as a boot option, is this one the difference?

[jwt873]

Yes...  A great experience!  

(This is my old Western Digital 500GB SATA 2 mechanical drive connected to the onboard SATAII controller)

Code:

hdparm -t /dev/sda7
 Timing buffered disk reads: 218 MB in  3.00 seconds =  72.62 MB/sec

(Now here's the OCZ 120 GB SATA 3 solid state drive in the same computer connected to the new Marvell SATA card)

Code:

hdparm -t /dev/sdc1
 Timing buffered disk reads: 984 MB in  3.00 seconds = 327.63 MB/sec  

On booting..... I have an 18 month old ASUS motherboard and the drive doesn't appear in the SATA drive list in the BIOS.   But, if I go over to the 'Boot Sequence' BIOS utility, the solid state drive is listed there and I can send it to the top of the list.   I haven't tried booting from it yet.

[AS]

Hi,

are you aware of OCZ recalling some 120 Gb drive ?

"...controllers are facing some severe problems that may range from Windows blue screens to the BIOS’ inability to detect the SSD ..."

http://buzztechno.com/ocz-confirms-vertex-3-and-agility-3-firmware-issues.html

Sorry if this is not a good news for you.

AS

[jwt873]

My system found the controller card and the OCZ drive..  The drive is formatted but is currently sitting empty waiting for the 64 bit version of PCLOS to be released

Yes, I'm aware of errors and BSOD's with these new fangled solid state drives.   I was just reading about the SSD's equipped with that  snappy Sandforce controller having BSOD problems..  Sandforce even has  a request on the main page of their site asking for people to report errant behavior.  http://www.sandforce.com/

I knew what I was facing going in, but, I guess I'm drawn to living on the bleeding edge