scottstuff : Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish)

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Grant

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:45:07 -0700

Thats a shame as I was hoping to hear good things about it, but it looked a tad cludegy when I read more about it. I can’t wait to hear how all of this turns out as I really need to do something similar at my house.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Alex

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 01:49:01 -0700

Linux supports i-RAM since kernel 2.6.18. I’m running Linux on i-RAM for a year now.

I have VIA SATA chipset motherboard and BIOS detects i-RAM. Only time BIOS failed to detect my i-RAM was right after power loss (battery died after 6 months and all my data is on the mercy of PCI standby power now). But I was able to fix the problem by pressing reset button.

Did you try Linux livecd to find out whether ICH9R support i-RAM? I’m pretty sure high end SATA RAID card will have hard time detecting it since i-RAM does not support SMART.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Scott Laird

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:45:40 -0700

Alex, the ICH9R isn’t a high-end RAID controller. It’s Intel’s current southbridge. It’s one of the most common motherboard SATA implementations. If the i-RAM won’t work with it, then there isn’t much of a reason for me to keep one around.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Alex

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:41:17 -0700

Oh, I meant Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-port SATA card. I read high-end SATA controller had problem detecting i-RAM. But the most onboard SATA chipset had no problem with i-RAM.

My motherboard has two SATA ports by VIA and two SATA ports by promise chpset. Both chipsets work with i-RAM. And I was able to install Linux, FreeBSD and Windows XP with any problem. But never tried solaris.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Scott Laird

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:37:32 -0700

The Supermicro card isn’t a RAID card either; it’s just Marvell’s 8-port PCI/PCI-X SATA controller on a small PCI-X board. The same basic chip shows up on the motherboard of some boxes.

In my case, the single biggest issue is that Intel’s chipset couldn’t see it in the BIOS. In this case, that ends up making the card kind of pointless, so it was best to return it.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Charles Darke

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:30:18 -0700

Put your ICH9R controller into RAID mode instead of AHCI.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Charles Darke

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:30:50 -0700

In the BIOS, put your ICH9R controller into RAID mode instead of AHCI.

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Walker Boh

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:46:34 -0700

I bought an I-RAM and have found that it works only with certain SATA controllers. The first motherboard was the Asus A8N-E. It would detect the i-Ram disk in the BIOS, but would crash when Anaconda tried to probe it during install. (Also failed with Debian Etch, and OpenSUSE 10.3)

The motherboard the I-RAM is currently happy with is the Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe. For my setup - the entire OS (Trixbox CE/Asterisk) is on the I-RAM, and then I have an 80GB drive for storing voicemail/video mail.

*scottstuff* : Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish)

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Grant

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Alex

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Scott Laird

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Alex

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Scott Laird

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Charles Darke

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Charles Darke

Comment on Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish) by Walker Boh

scottstuff : Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK / i-RAM Review(-ish)