3TB drives and intel ICH10R compatibility

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My google-foo is failing me. I've got an old e8400 system collecting dust that I'd like to convert into a WHS box. Can anyone confirm if p45/ICH10R mobos can handle 3TB drives correctly or am I limited to using 2TB drives?

Edit: I should mention I need to run this system in AHCI mode for use with an SSD and trim
 
My google-foo is failing me. I've got an old e8400 system collecting dust that I'd like to convert into a WHS box. Can anyone confirm if p45/ICH10R mobos can handle 3TB drives correctly or am I limited to using 2TB drives?

Edit: I should mention I need to run this system in AHCI mode for use with an SSD and trim

Your mobo/Southbridge are not the (potential) concern; they can definitely issue the 48-bit (extended) SATA commands, and wouldn't have such brain-dead microcode to use 32-bit integers (unsigned, of course) for sector addresses.

You need to make sure that WHS's drivers do not have said 32-bit idiocy. Also, be aware of the MBR/partitioning issues for >2TB.

--UhClem
 
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My google-foo is failing me. I've got an old e8400 system collecting dust that I'd like to convert into a WHS box. Can anyone confirm if p45/ICH10R mobos can handle 3TB drives correctly or am I limited to using 2TB drives?

Edit: I should mention I need to run this system in AHCI mode for use with an SSD and trim

My Gigabyte P45 board does not handle 3TB drives with the ICH10R ports.

Oddly though the 2 Jmicron ports do work with my 3TB drive.
 
My Gigabyte P45 board does not handle 3TB drives with the ICH10R ports.

Oddly though the 2 Jmicron ports do work with my 3TB drive.

When you say it doesn't work, do you mean it reports a lower capacity or some other problem? Did you have it formatted as a GPT disk? What OS was this?
 
Your mobo/Southbridge are not the (potential) concern; they can definitely issue the 48-bit (extended) SATA commands, and wouldn't have such brain-dead microcode to use 32-bit integers (unsigned, of course) for sector addresses.

You need to make sure that WHS's drivers do not have said 32-bit idiocy. Also, be aware of the MBR/partitioning issues for >2TB.

--UhClem

Intel has updated storage drivers to add support for larger drives. I just see a lot of conflicting reports and no solid confirmation that ICH10R boards will officially work in AHCI mode even when they're updated and running a modern 64bit OS with GPT formatted disks.
 
When you say it doesn't work, do you mean it reports a lower capacity or some other problem? Did you have it formatted as a GPT disk? What OS was this?

Windows 7, using GPT, but it showed the drive only have 746GB.

Apparently this is due to the board not having EFI. Gigabyte did release a utility to work around the issue, but it only works with newer boards, not the P45.
http://www.gigabyte.us/MicroSite/276/3tb.html

But I tried the jmicron ports and it sees my full 3TB drive just fine, something the other 6 ICH10R ports wouldn't do.
 
Intel has updated storage drivers to add support for larger drives. I just see a lot of conflicting reports and no solid confirmation that ICH10R boards will officially work in AHCI mode even when they're updated and running a modern 64bit OS with GPT formatted disks.

My experience was from 6 months ago, using the newest drivers at the time.

Actually should be getting a second 3TB drive today or tomorrow. I might update the drivers and try them on the ICH10R ports again to see if things have changed.
 
My experience was from 6 months ago, using the newest drivers at the time.

Actually should be getting a second 3TB drive today or tomorrow. I might update the drivers and try them on the ICH10R ports again to see if things have changed.

Awesome, I'd love to hear how it goes for you.
 
Intel Rapid Storage Technology

The newest drivers will give you full support for 3TB drives. 10.1 drivers gave me problems on a P55 mobo. But 10.5.1.1001 and newest 10.6.0.1002 have been working flawless. And make sure to use GPT partition table.
 
Intel Rapid Storage Technology

The newest drivers will give you full support for 3TB drives. 10.1 drivers gave me problems on a P55 mobo. But 10.5.1.1001 and newest 10.6.0.1002 have been working flawless. And make sure to use GPT partition table.

Gah. Intel's website is such a POS. I went there yesterday to make sure I had the latest drivers and it only showed the 10.1.0.1008, which are over 7 months old. And I already had them installed.

My 3TB drive arrived today, I tried it again, same thing as before, won't see more than 746GB, if it sees it at all. Put it on the Jmicron controller and it sees the entire drive.

Unfortunately I didn't see the last reply until just now. I could not find those 10.5 or 10.6 drivers. But after googling those specific version numbers for Intel drivers, I was able to find the download page for them (stupid Intel site).

I'll try again tomorrow with the 10.6 drivers and see what happens.
 
Installed the 10.6.0.1022 drivers.

In the RAID Option ROM it still sees only a 746GB drive.
In Windows it won't even see the drive still with the new drivers.
So no change.

I got both 3TB drives on the Jmicron controller. This works perfectly fine, so I'll just leave it as is.
The drive also came with a RocketRAID 62X PCIE 1x card. I didn't use it though. But I assume it'll work too and i has two SATA ports on it.
 
Something is wrong at the OS level, my ancient P5B-Deluxe (P965) board with ICH8R chipset can see 3TB drives (Hitatchi 3K5000 model) just fine, formatted in GPT as a single 3TB partition in Windows 7 Pro x64. There was a Windows 7 patch within the last year (probably rolled into SP1) that fixed 3TB issues. I don't know how ICH10R could have an issue, being two generations newer.

There is an issue in the first version of WHS (not 2011) and 3TB drives, I remember doing research on it and there is an in-depth KB article about it, can't find the link at the moment.
 
Your mobo/Southbridge are not the (potential) concern; ... , and wouldn't have such brain-dead microcode to use 32-bit integers (unsigned, of course) for sector addresses.
Well, I was wrong to assume that (especially) Intel would not make such a fubar. (They are the creator of that "Option ROM", aren't they?)

When you do a little arithmetic regarding that 746GB report, you find that they really did screw up. By trying to cram the value returned in words 100-103 (4x16-bit) from the SATA Identify Device Command (0xEC) into a 32-bit variable, you get this brilliant result (ie, 746GB). The short version proof: 3TB drive is really 2794GB. 2794 - 2048 = 746. (2048GB represents that "lost" bit worth of sectors.)

I'm not surprised when I see such a blunder coming from the Far East, but I don't expect it from Intel. (Please, somebody, tell me I'm mistaken; I don't have a P45, but my P35/ICH9R has an Intel copyright message during the Option ROM stage of boot.) Sure, the P45 is 2-3 years old, but ... (See Moore's Law ==> Gordon Moore ==> Intel co-founder :))

-- UhClem "Welcome to the Future Fair, a fair for all and no fair to anybody."
 
I want to necro this because I still have this problem today. ICH10R on Asus P6T x58 chipset from Intel does not see a 6TB drive; it sees a 1.5TB drive. Consequently it is impossible to create a RAID 1 array out of the two 6TB drives. Even though Windows and the latest RST driver can see the drives of the correct size, it is impossible to bond the two drives into a RAID array.
 
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