I manage a server where backups to a USB drive have gotten to the point where they exceed the window of time allotted for daily maintenance due to the server's production schedule (one hour a day, seven days a week).
To this point, backups have been written to an external USB2 drive. I need the backups to go faster. I don't have any available internal SATA ports so it's time to put in some sort of eSATA/SAS interface, right?
So I bought an inexpensive PCIe eSATA controller based on a Sil3132 chipset. In point of fact, every card I can find that has built-in eSATA ports is a Sil3132-based device (this is a 1U server; I'd have a hard time doing anything else).
You can find quite a few based on Marvell 9123, 9128 etc chipsets. I've had terrible luck with the Marvell 9123 and drives dissapearing after some random reads/writes (I'm using RHEL6).
I just bought the card you're talking about I think:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816318005
I hope it's just an OS thing and not an issue with the chipset, I'll know tonight (I'll be using it with a external SATA tower (Sans Digital TR8M-B 8 Bay + 5x2TB in RAID6). If so maybe you can try a few more sets of drivers?
Plugged the card in, loaded the drivers and... no eSATA drives. The drives work. I formatted them in the enclosures on a desktop with working ports.
The card's manufacturer suggested I try flashing the card's BIOS to the latest version, but my card is already the latest BIOS that's supplied by both that manufacturer and by Silicon Image.
So I got another card. Different manufacturer, same chipset. Same thing. Drives aren't detected. Different known-working drive enclosure? Same thing. Drives aren't detected.
Card #3. Same thing.
Tyan: "No idea. Ask the people who made the card."
People who made the cards: "It's not us. It's the motherboard/drive/enclosure."
Silicon Image: "We don't deal with end users."
I've probably put 20 hours into what should have been 10 minutes of down time for these people.
I see very few variations of these eSATA chipsets and tons and tons of companies rebranding/selling them. Marvell is another one, perhaps try a 9128 based one ? though I'd avoid the 9123 as it has manufacturing flaws (ASUS dropped it from it's P55 motherboards and the company has released a press release about defects).
On personal systems or where budget is constrained I always choose to use software RAID on the OS level (mdadm in Linux) and have controllers act as dumb as possible, only showing the drives as block devices to the OS where I can control all elements of the RAID. I just make sure I always have enough CPU power to handle parity calculations.
As you're using this for work your other option could be just using a hardware asics RAID card, though they are quite expensive at this point you've probably already paid for it in your time spent. Maybe you've learned something outside of the driver frustration hopefully so it wasn't a complete wash.
I am going through a similiar issue here, I've been through 2 marvell-based SATA controllers now, a 3rd SiL 3132 based one arrives today (your card I think). My issue is somewhat similiar - drives just disappear after random activity.
Good luck!
