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ARC-1883 series & WDC2001FASS

S

skubany

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 4, 2008
Messages
87
Anyone has the Areca ARC-1883 series raid controller and WDC2001FASS hard drives working?

I've recently purchased ARC-1883ix-12 and it does not detect WDC2001FASS hard drives.
ARC-123ML and ARC-1220 both detect them.

I had plans to purchase ARC-1883i to replace ARC-1220, but I'm afraid the 1883 series will not detect these drives and I wanted to use them with the 1883i controller.

The drives spin up but are not listed by the controller. Not when the system is booting and not in the Raid Console.

Thanks.
 
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Do you have the jumper on the pins to force the drive into 1.5gbit mode? The newer 12gbit Areca controllers don't support that speed anymore.
 
There's no jumper on the drive. Maybe I can put one to force some settings - I will take a look.

I did find a "product sheet" (or whatever they're called) that indicates that the "SS" in the model name means the drive is 3gbit, as opposed to 1.5gbit.

I've finally got a response from Areca, it appears the earlier e-mail they sent never reached me, which is a problem on its own. Anyway, Areca writes that I should try the expander management console and force the port (or ports) to 3gbit. Interestingly, there is an option to do that in the raid console (http) but when I set 6 or 3 for WDC it makes no difference.

I'll try the "expander" thing, but only if I can do that without using an external device connected to the RJ11 port on the controller.

On the side, an old WD5000YS drive is recognized without any issues. Just checked, it's a 3gbit drive.
 
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Don't have a serial port anywhere? Card should have included a RJ11 to DB9 cable. I've never accessed the CLI for the expander any other way personally.
 
I've connected the hard drive to my older Areca card, which detects the hard drive as "SATA300" so I don't know what gives with the new Areca.

I have an old laptop with a serial port, I'll try using it to connect to the controller and if I can get it to recognize the drives I'll get a usb-to-serial adapter.
 
Hi. Not sure why the 1883 won't recognize the drives. However, have you used them on the other controllers beyond making sure they are recognized? I had a terrible time with these drives and their successor, the WD2002FAEX, with MDADM RAID5 on a standard LSI non RAID controller. Just be aware that they do not support TLER and WD won't support them in RAID. I wasted many hours with tech support thinking they should work since it was software RAID but gave up. The WD2002FAEX work fine in RAID10, however - running for three years as ESX iSCSI targets.

Hope your experience is different!

Mike
 
I did, I used them for many years on ARC-1231ML. Possibly on ARC-1120 before that.
I had no trouble from these drives.
 
Got an usb-to-serial adapter. Went into CLI and switched the relevant ports to 3g. The hard drives are now detected by the controller.

So it works. The problem is, something I realized while playing with CLI, that in my plan these WD drives would be connected to ARC-1883i, which does not have RJ11 port.

The Raid Console's hard drive speed drop downs (for Hitachi, WDC and Seagate, each) should have the same effect as changing the link max/min values through the CLI. It seems like the option is not working correctly.

I wonder what's different about these drives. A WD5000YS is automatically set to 3G speed when inserted.
 
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The 1883i doesn't have an integrated SAS expander (what was causing the incompatibility and what the RJ11 port is for), so you don't have to worry about that actually.
 
Yeah, I'm thinking the same thing.

Will have to (try) to confirm with Areca. Don't want to buy the controller and then have to return it.
 
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