IRIX Network Forums
Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - Printable Version

+- IRIX Network Forums (//forums.irixnet.org)
+-- Forum: SGI/MIPS (//forums.irixnet.org/forum-3.html)
+--- Forum: Hardware/Triage/Repair (//forums.irixnet.org/forum-11.html)
+--- Thread: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? (/thread-719.html)

Pages: 1 2

Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - Knezzen - 11-28-2018

Like the thread subject says; is/was there any bootable SATA PCI cards available for SGI's and particularly the Fuel?
I'm getting a Fuel this weekend and it would be wonderful if I could make it boot from a SATA SSD.

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - Raion - 11-28-2018

No.

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - silicium - 01-19-2019

What about an expensive Acard SCSI to SATA converter ?

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - kubatyszko - 01-19-2019

(01-19-2019, 06:22 PM)silicium Wrote:  What about an expensive Acard SCSI to SATA converter ?

That might work, but the converters are in $200-$300 range!.

If you *really* want to boot over SATA, you could clone (xfsdump -> xfsrestore) the OS drive to the SATA one, and modify /etc/fstab to have kernel mount that one at boot - but very few people ever do this, and reliability of this solution hasn't been established.

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - necron2600 - 01-20-2019

Regarding Acard scsi to sata bridges.. 200-300$ was a couple years ago. Its more closer to 10x time that price now for some unknown reason (ebay/amazon searches).

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - gijoe77 - 01-21-2019

the ACARD SATA to SCSI cards are bootable with a SSD, I use them in my o2 and Tezro - nothing special to get them to work, the system treats them like any other scsi disk. They appear to be closer to the $2k price range now because someone seems to have cornered the market with them

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - Irinikus - 01-21-2019

Is the performance improvement significant enough to justify the price?

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - jan-jaap - 01-21-2019

(01-21-2019, 07:17 AM)Irinikus Wrote:  Is the performance improvement significant enough to justify the price?

No, production of these things ceased, and ever since the price doubled every other month.

A SATA SSD works pretty well for a system disk of course, but it's still held back by the U160 SCSI bus. Ian Mapleson did some benchmarking.

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - Irinikus - 01-21-2019

(01-21-2019, 08:06 AM)jan-jaap Wrote:  
(01-21-2019, 07:17 AM)Irinikus Wrote:  Is the performance improvement significant enough to justify the price?

No, production of these things ceased, and ever since the price doubled every other month.

A SATA SSD works pretty well for a system disk of course, but it's still held back by the U160 SCSI bus. Ian Mapleson did some benchmarking.

Thanks for confirming what I thought. It would be a totally different story if you could get a PCI SATA card that worked in these machines.

I happen to have a PCI SATA card in one of my G4’s that that system can boot from.

RE: Does a bootable SATA PCI card exist? - jan-jaap - 01-21-2019

(01-21-2019, 08:25 AM)Irinikus Wrote:  It would be a totally different story if you could get a PCI SATA card that worked in these machines.
You can, just not as a boot device.

In my O350 I have an LSI SAS3041X-R with a pair of 2TB SATA disks attached which gives me 4TB scratch space:
Code:
Integral SCSI controller 5: Version SAS/SATA LS1064
  Disk drive: unit 1 on SCSI controller 5 (XVM Local Disk) (primary path)
  Disk drive: unit 2 on SCSI controller 5 (XVM Local Disk) (primary path)
It's SATA-2 (3Gb/s per disk) but that's only a limitation with SSDs. IRIX also has a 2TB limit for SCSI devices (LUNs, technically). To break this you need to create an XLV/XVM volume from multiple devices each smaller than 2TB.

Code:
# diskpatch -v | grep ATA
sc5d1l0:  Disk         ATA     SAMSUNG HD204UI 0001  Serial: S2H7J9BB
sc5d2l0:  Disk         ATA     SAMSUNG HD204UI 0001  Serial: S2HGJ1BZ

You can buy those LSI adapters relatively cheap. you'll have to get creative to install the disks though. In my O350 the second module didn't have an IO9 or SCSI backplane so I mounted the SATA disks there. You can always take it external, I guess.