Recent content by Hardy

You are correct: WD black. Our critical data is on enterprise drives, and we are working on a migration plan for the non-critical data. Thanks for your advice.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, we had to do the no-init before and it was tedious. Kevin Wang was critical to our success. We don't want to repeat that experience. The 1680ix-24 has a 6-disk boot array (RAID 6) and a 16-disk data array with hot spare (RAID 6), in addition to the SAS Expander...

Thank you for the reply. I agree with your primary points -- RAID is not a replacement for backups, and generally you don't want to just add a dropped drive back into an array. The Expander card is an Areca 8026-24, and most removal/reinserts are to drives on the same cable (I've switched...

We have an Areca 1680ix-24 with an Areca SAS Expander card. There is a 24-drive RAID 6 array using all 24 Expander card slots. At least once a week, the controller card will sense one of those drives being "removed" then immediately "reinserted", causing an array rebuild. {Would love to hear...

I have an Areca 1680ix-24 controlling 48 SATA disks (3 RAID arrays), some via an Areca SAS Expander card. I also have the Areca battery-backup unit. Windows froze and I had to hard-power the machine. When it came back online, one of the RAID arrays was incomplete. The Areca event log...

Thanks, OldSchool. Considering the severity of the issue, the level of help, and the positive outcome, it was quite reasonable. .

It has been a nail-biting month for us, but ultimately we did (a) find a working fix, (b) successfully expand the volume, and (c) not lose any data! The short version of what we went through includes working with Kevin @ Areca & his engineers, on an almost daily basis, week-after-week...

Good suggestions. Areca was, in fact, our first stop, though not Kevin. Is he best reached by support@a.c.tw? I agree: When working with tech support, condensed questions are best. My posts are rather comprehensive since, as you know, [H]ard|Forum readers tend to seek detailed...

Well, we did some further investigation, and found the following: The logical-to-physical drive order / mapping is the same with the Areca SAS expander as with the Chenbro. Namely, Areca ports 1-4 are physical drives right-to-left. We tried the Chenbro expander again, but got the same...

That's right: Areca controller & expander cards support drive identification, and 8087-to-8087 cables carry the signals, but Norco chassis / backplanes lack the capability. Incidentally, the rebuild should have completed, based on previous rebuild rates for this specific Raidset -- always...

Hope them was some tasty suds, nitrobass24! Hot spare, done. 1 TB drive restricted to array containing 1 TB drives, and 2 TB drives [will be, once array is healthy,] restricted to array containing 2 TB drives. I'm a bit concerned about your comment that the Areca controller would...

Thanks for the tip. Still not sure how to: - ID in which physical chassis slot logical "Slot #1" is, nor - ensure the Raidset "picks-up" the drives in a desired order The SAS expander cards (Chenbro & Areca) each have 6 8087 female connectors, numbered 1 thru 6, with corresponding...

Great. This simplifies our hot spare choices: - the 1 TB spare will be restricted to the Raidset #001 / data volume #1 (which uses 1 TB drives, exclusively), and - the 2 x 2 TB spares will be restricted to the Raidset #002 / data volume #2 (which uses 2 TB drives, exclusively) The 2 TB...

[Jus, I figured it'd be you or odditory who replied first! Thanks for jumping in!] DRIVES Regarding the drives: - the tower case has the SAS (boot) drive and the 1 TB (data volume #1) drives - the Norco chassis has the 2 TB (data volume #2) drives - the tower drives (boot & data)...

We have a complicated situation and would like opinions on how to proceed &/or what to avoid doing. We have an Areca 1680ix-24 (with battery back-up unit {BBU} and current firmware) in a tower case. This connects internally to: - 4 x 15k SAS drives in RAID 1+0 (or vice versa) as a boot...