I'm looking for a 4 ports pci or pci-express (not pci-x) sata controller with these features: - real hot swap support - no RAID support, or with RAID support that can be disabled through the controller bios interface or reflashing the bios
My need is to hot plug/unplug one or more different sata1 and/or sata2 disks from different brands size and speed (even at the same time), coming from my customers computers to perform lab activities on them, like backup.
I tried several Silicon Image controllers (3112,3114,3124) and Promise TX4. Everyone has issues: some disks are not seen or are dropped during the backup process while the Promise even hangs the host pc with some hard-drives. Adaptec raid (Serveraid 8s) controllers aren't transparent to the operating system and it seems there is noway to disable the raid.
What would you suggest?
Thank you!