visopsys.org

Could it be possible to add support for SAS disks and HBAs (PCIe cards that are generic enough to have a single generic driver), etc.?

Does Visopsys contain code to do things like the sg_format utility to reformat to 512 or 4KB sectors, or to create/restore disk images from all kinds of media, in LBA mode and with custom CHS limits for a given image? It is very important to reactivate disks that come from dedicated servers and make them compatible with standard PCs through USB enclosures or PCI cards.

I don't know if SAS drives are becoming more popular than SATA and maybe NVME due to their speed and simultaneous read/write capability that doesn't slow it down it from speeds of 1.2 GB/s or 2.4 GB/s as far as I know for 12G or 24G drives, and for their increased durability, but I have almost only been buying SAS Samsung SSDs and 20TB hard disks lately these years, no longer SATA unless I have an emergency like cloning external disks that were in enclosures that emulate 4KB sectors with 512 byte SATA disks.

Hi ~ (homey? )

I enjoy writing drivers for new hardware, but it is time consuming, and of course I need to own example(s) of that hardware.

The last year or so my free time has been very constrained , but I've had a long time Visopsys project in the works to upgrade the multitasker, add 64-bit support, and UEFI booting. So: more general OS stuff. And I have additional general things I'd like to do, like reworking the UI elements and the GUI shell itself.

In effect, the truth is that adding hardware support for new types of disks is probably not going to happen soon (unless someone wants to jump in and help out with that!). Sorry!

Andy

For SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) the very first essential card you need to own is the PCIe, LSI-3041 (B).
https://www.amazon.es/405272-006-795224 ... B0BHNG36PT

It will allow you to reformat even drives that had its low level format interrupted with sg_format where other SAS controllers now fail to recognize the interrupted drive. Will allow you to feed the drive externally, turn off the computer and check back later by reconnecting to the PC if you want to save power for extremely huge drives, 18TB and higher.