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Arc-1222 CDROM?

S

Shaun_Dark_Lord

Weaksauce
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
74
Hi all

I installed an ARC-1212 RAID controller in my Main Gaming PC a few weeks back to try to avoid some major stbility issues I was having with my nVidia 780i motherboard. This worked for a while, but has still been causing issues with my SATA DVD drives. As a result, I've had to disable them.

I'm thinking of upgrading to the ARC-1222 and using the four extra channels to connect my DVD drives.

Is that ok? Will the DVD drives function OK? Will it impact on the performance of the RAID controller?

I'm also assuming that my existing ARC-1212 RAID array will be detected by the ARC-1222.

Thanks

Shaun
 
it's a sas controller so no idea if that will work. I would try it for you but I just dismantled my test setup. Since you actually have arc1212 try plugging in a sata dvd drive and see if it works.
 
I'm already using all four channels on my 1212.

An ARC-1222 arrived this morning - I'll give it a go - If it works, I'll keep it, if not will try to send it back.
 
Well so far no good....... The ARC-1222 did pick up my existing RAID5 array without problems, so I don't need to reinstall windows - But the DVD drives are not showing up. This could be a setting somewhere, it could be old firmware (unable to download latest firmware for some reason), or it could be that it won't work.

I've emailed Areca to ask if it's likely to work.

According to Wiki, SAS should support SATA DVD drives; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI
 
SATA follows the ATA command set and thus only supports hard drives and CD/DVD drives. In theory, SAS also supports numerous other devices including scanners and printers.
Click to expand...

In my experience, SAS controllers do not support SATA optical drives. Although the theory is there, in practice, the SAS controllers can only see SATA hard drives, or SAS devices. If they release a SAS burner, you're in business.
 
Hmm, then get a simple SATA controller, pci or pcie for your cdrom.

What is wrong with the onboard SATA?
 
I would if I had a spare PCI slot that wasn't under a big hefty graphics card :)

Basically the 780i and 790i motherboards seem to have been designed and built by satan himself. There are so many random problems, that I've had 8 BIOS uptades in the past 9 months. The EVGA forums are swamped with problem reports, and the fact that every other person seems to have problems with either the onboard RAID, SATA optical drives, a combination of the two, or no problems whatsoever really helped to push me towards the Areca card in the first place.

The real issue is the randomness of the problems - After moving my storage over to the Areca, my 4 SATA DVD drives worked fine for about a month - I left DVD boxsets ripping overnight with no problems. Then suddenly Vista would BSOD at startup consistently until I unplugged the DVD drives.

Getting the Areca to run my DVD drives would be the ideal solution - My onboard SATA could stay disabled, and never bother me again. The alternative is to shelve two brand new Blu-Ray drives and my DVD writers, and use a USB optical drive until nVidia fix the problem - Which they won't, as they've decided the Motherboard chipset market is too much hassle.
 
Hmm, have you tried both the newest Nvidia drivers, and also going back to the "standard Microsoft" ones?
 
I haven't tried the latest latest drivers - I went through about two months of "trying stuff" that people said was working for them, and finally gave up and went and played on my PS3. I've gotten to the age where I want to get home from work and not worry about whether my PC will boot or not. I just want it to work.

However, I can't thow money at this problem - It would cost too much to simply replace my motherboard - I'd probably have to replace quite a few other components too.

I might give new drivers one last chance this weekend. After that I might just have to consider trading the ARC-1212 and ARC-1222 in for an ARC-1680i or something similar. Although that could cause problems, as I don't think my VR's are on the approved list for that controller.

Why is nothing simple?
 
The Asus uses a 680i chipset - so no quad SLI :(

I have been looking at the Skulltrail - But I'm reluctant to go for something that seems more of a technical exercise. ECC DDR2 would hurt performance, the chipset cooler is loud enough to wake the dead, and I've not seen a quad SLI setup working on one yet. I would love an Intel chipset though. Maybe I can hold out for Skulltrail2 with 16 DDR3 slots and 4 CPU sockets....................
 
According to Nvidia the following chipsets all support Quad SLI

http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_quadsli.html

o NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 680i LT SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI for INTEL
o NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI for AMD
o NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI for AMD
 
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