On 2008-03-06, RS <ravi2boxster@gmail.com> wrote:
quoted text
> I am planning to build an OpenBSD storage server for home use. I was
> wondering if I could get some advice before I buy the hard disks. I am
> looking at either a couple of Samsung 750GB  spinpoint's or the 1TB Seagate
> Barracuda. I understand AHCI support was added to 4.2 and I'd like to know
> if NCQ can give me a little more performance...Is the AHCI driver generic
> enough that *any* SATA2 drive will benefit from it?

AHCI is a way of talking to the controller, not the disk, it would work
with any drive if the motherboard's controller works with it.

quoted text
> I'll be using a cheap Athlon X2 / 1GB / Gig ethernet / mATX board to
> complete the setup. I will definitely use OpenBSD's RAIDCtl for RAID 1
> instead of the crappy on-board chips motherboard makers ship nowadays.

The on-board RAID on cheap boards is typically software RAID with
BIOS assistance to help it boot and as you probably know isn't supported
here at all.

But do you really need RAID? It introduces a bunch of complexities.
I have RAID on a home server (LSI h/w raid) and the last time a drive
fell over*, I wished I'd just used a couple of drives and rsync'd
between them...


* (grumble stupid 0-based drive numbering in software vs. 1-based
port numbering printed on the card, and no display of hard drive
serial numbers in ctrl-m config...)