ARECA Owner's Thread (SAS/SATA RAID Cards)

Both work, thought I think I'm the only one here running any of the enterprise 2TB drives. They're just not cost effective for home use.
 
Blue Fox said:
Both work, thought I think I'm the only one here running any of the enterprise 2TB drives. They're just not cost effective for home use.
Click to expand...

I was needing to get the drives in the 80-89 range to make this a feasible budget. The hitachis are in the 120 range. Even with a volume discount i doubt anyone could hit that price point.

What is this silent corruption issue you spoke of with the Samsungs. Was the issues you experience just due to the expansion i hope.
 
Well, I've got my Hitachis and I am currently testing them thoroughly. Now I need to order an 1880i. The question I have is does it always come with the 2 fanout cables?

I found an ARC-1880i Here for substantially less than what it is listed for on most other sites. Unfortunately there is no info on whether the fanout cables come with it, and I can see the lower price being a reflection of that. Their support was entirely unhelpful, they essentially emailed me back and said they didn't know...

Anyone here happen to know? :confused:
 
OldSchool said:
Well, I've got my Hitachis and I am currently testing them thoroughly. Now I need to order an 1880i. The question I have is does it always come with the 2 fanout cables?

I found an ARC-1880i Here for substantially less than what it is listed for on most other sites. Unfortunately there is no info on whether the fanout cables come with it, and I can see the lower price being a reflection of that. Their support was entirely unhelpful, they essentially emailed me back and said they didn't know...

Anyone here happen to know? :confused:
Click to expand...

I talked to them yesterday. If you can wait 2-3 weeks they have it shipped direct from the manuafacturer. Newegg's high price is balaced by the fact they actually have it in stock. Most places i looked had to order it direct from the manufacturer and di not have it actually in stock.
 
OldSchool said:
Well, I've got my Hitachis and I am currently testing them thoroughly. Now I need to order an 1880i. The question I have is does it always come with the 2 fanout cables?

I found an ARC-1880i Here for substantially less than what it is listed for on most other sites. Unfortunately there is no info on whether the fanout cables come with it, and I can see the lower price being a reflection of that. Their support was entirely unhelpful, they essentially emailed me back and said they didn't know...

Anyone here happen to know? :confused:
Click to expand...

I got one of my 1880i's from Newegg and the other one directly from Areca taiwan and both times they came with 2 x fanout cables, which I'll never use since I've gotten rid of all my cases that had SATA connectors on the backplane. I'd be very surprised if you got an 1880i box without the cables, but if you don't then you can have mine for the cost of shipping.
 
So let me get this straight.. the card comes with 2 fan and four sff 8087 cables? I just ordered my card from newegg and bought 5 sff 8087 - 8087 cables thinking that all the cables it came with were sata fan out cables. I am going to be a little miffed if it comes with the right cables. I mean its good to have spares but a 20 bucks a piece i don't need a complete extra set.
 
and the 15% restocking fee :mad:

oh well i will see what cables it comes with. Newegg is usually pretty cool about returns.
 
Exocet956 said:
I was needing to get the drives in the 80-89 range to make this a feasible budget. The hitachis are in the 120 range. Even with a volume discount i doubt anyone could hit that price point.

What is this silent corruption issue you spoke of with the Samsungs. Was the issues you experience just due to the expansion i hope.
Click to expand...

Just remember.. you get what you pay for.

I would pay $120 for drives that are known great performers + reliable any day of the week over 80-89 ones that have already been reported to have problems.
 
Definitely, it would be nice to know more about this Samsung issue. Newegg dropped the price again back to 79 and I'm ready to pull the trigger on new drives.

But, after being burned by the 7200.11s I've no desire to have more drives with issues....but 50 dollars a drive difference is pretty huge.
 
Exocet956 said:
So samsungs do not work the with the 1880's? I have about 40 drives i am about to order. I need to make damn sure i order the right drives. What 2tb drives aside from the hitachi's actually do work?

I thought the consensus here was the samsungs were okay for the 1880 series.

I need to order these drives asap. But i dont want to be stuck with drives that wont work. Please help me out guys.
Click to expand...

Do NOT get the Samsungs. My problem is pretty much only that the time-outs coincedently happened at the same time on 3 drives. A reboot would have brought the array back up, had I not been running an expansion.

Further, these drives have a silent corruption problem. I don't have the exact link to the article here anymore, but they managed to reproduce this on a couple of differen systems with different drivers. When you write to the disk while requesting SMART data it can cause a bad block or just corruption, but you won't get any feedback about this, so you won't find out until it's too late.

I'm thinking about springing for the 3 TB Hitachi now... Will keep informed if I do switch.

edit: Hmmm... just saw the link to Samsung for the patch, they might be interesting after all... Again, my problem was very coincedental, and would not have been a real problem besides the reboot if I hadn't been running an expansion.
 
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I will be firing up my 1880 array + astek A33606 SAS expander + 30 samsung F4 drives this week.

I'll be patching each drive, then building and initializing then testing. I'll keep this thread posted.
 
I am atm running 12x Samsung F4 2TB drives on my 1680 + HP sas expander and i get a few timeout on random drives but atm it is about 1 time out per month or less.
 
Just upgraded my 1880IX and a quick new features

1) I see is that it now shows the time it takes to initialize the controller on being powered up.
2) You can apparently adjust the levels of alerts for each email address setup for SMTP alerts.
 
Is there a best practice for Disk Capacity Truncation Mode outside of leaving it at the default 10G?
 
vr. said:
Is there a best practice for Disk Capacity Truncation Mode outside of leaving it at the default 10G?
Click to expand...
I'd say if you are mixing different drives that report different sizes the 10G is your best bet. Granted you lose those little 1-2GB of disk space as it normalizes across all drives.
 
Anyone have a rough estimate of how long I should expect a Raid 6 to initialize with an 1880i and 8x2TB Hitachi 7K2000s?
 
OldSchool said:
Anyone have a rough estimate of how long I should expect a Raid 6 to initialize with an 1880i and 8x2TB Hitachi 7K2000s?
Click to expand...

This all depends on the priority to set on the raid controller. For me at medium it took around 20 hours on 11x2TB Seagate 6GB
 
OldSchool said:
Anyone have a rough estimate of how long I should expect a Raid 6 to initialize with an 1880i and 8x2TB Hitachi 7K2000s?
Click to expand...

I initialized 16 x 2TB Hitachi 7K2000's in 6h 33m on an 1880i dual-linked to an HP SAS Expander using RAID6 and "Foreground Initialization" mode, and 24 drives in RAID6 took 9h 16m, so I'd guess 8 drives would take somewhere between 4-6 hours assuming you've either connected the drives directly to the 1880i, or are dual-linking to an expander.
 
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I am guessing the timer on the FW initialization (I also noticed this) has to do with it not supposed to hang there anymore?

Here is the changelog (no mention of faildisk support being added):

Code: 
*********  Change Log For V1.49 Firmware

2010-1-8
        1 Improve SMP support for ARC1680
2010-1-27
        1 ARC1680/1212/1682 4.9.2.0 transport firmware N.G. for some HDDs
          use 4.7.3.0
2010-2-4
        1 Fix VOLUME_FAILED cause controller to hang
2010-4-8
        1 ARC1880:1st release
2010-4-12
        1 Add:HP SAS EXP Card 2.02 support
2010-4-15
        1 SAS_HOST_MODE:support 6G expander
          ARC1680 ....
          ARC1880/8040 ....
        2 ARC1880/8040:change STACK_SIZE_LOW to avoid problem when LCD panel or VT100
          operate HDD fucntion
        3 ARC1880/8040:Add LCD initialization strings (test SDRAM ...)
2010-4-16
        1 LCD panel:remove checking of MAX 3 hot spare
2010-4-19
        1 CheckMigratingX:added for migration failed but migration status is
          inconsistent
        2 Remove inconsistent fail flag for raid6 migration
2010-4-29
        1 Improve checking of spurious SCB/IO, move the check to LinkErrorDevHandle
        2 Fix removing of failed HDD hang the system
2010-4-30
        1 ARC1880/8040:Fix LSI6G PLI implementation of Start/StopUnit and SATA
          passthrough problem
2010-5-5
        1 SUPPORT_CHANGE_CAPACITY:after volume capacity is expanded, return check
          condition with CAPACITY DATA Changed
2010-5-7
        1 ARC1880/8040:RaidInitZero may break, because raid may be freed before
          init routine to complete
        2 During volume check of RAID4/5/6, hot removing of entire raidset will cause
          raidNumberOfDevices to 0, and checking routine will hang
2010-5-12
        1 Fix when expasion raidset and target disk failed, after migration pasued
          and controller restarted, the migration halted
2010-5-14
        1 Add DISK_WRITE_CACHE_SETTING for models without BBU to control disk write
          cache mode
2010-5-17
        1 Fix race condition for cache line allocation
2010-5-18
        1 Fix SAS/SAS2 model's SPC3 compliance
2010-6-1
        1 Add ThreadDelayMs to improve GUI speed of PCI host adapter
2010-6-4
        1 Tune ARC1880 performance
2010-6-28
        1 Fix ARC1880:1st level attached device's RED LED not on if device removed
2010-6-29
        1 Enclosure.c:Add space between E%d and %s
2010-7-2
        1 ARC1880:fix zoning problem
2010-7-5
        1 ARC1880/1680:Add 6G expander zoning support
2010-7-20
        1 Fix TEST_ZONING with log
        2 Fix enclousre power off with raidset is initializing or rebuilding...
2010-7-27
        1 ARC1880:modify geteon delay stepping,
2010-7-28
        1 Add support for mail greet pause, use different tcp_send timeout value
2010-7-29
        1 Fix raidset activate problem for rebuilding percentage
2010-7-30
        1 Add display of Error Recovery Control Status of SATA hdd
2010-8-19
        1 Modify pure SATA's NEW_83782D_HWMON SNMP
2010-8-20
        1 Patch ARC1880 bootcode for PLI Phase6/7
2010-8-30
        1 Add CheckEesaBlackList to exclude some HDD with error recovery control
          problem
2010-9-2
        1 Add SUPPORT for ARC1880IXL-8
2010-9-9
        1 ARC1880:fix return from BBM with 4G sdram
2010-9-16
        1 Fix when many volumes is created for RAID6 and failed two drive, some volume
          may still NEED_REBUILD and REBUILDING
2010-9-17
        1 Fix SAS devices add/remove routine is invoked before SasDeviceInit is called
2010-10-6
        1 Add support for ARC1880LP
2010-10-7
        1 Modify GetResource and PostResource
2010-10-15
    1 Fix write through problem for IOP348 based HBA
      (0) ARC1680/1212/1682/SPT1680/WTN1212
      (A) Only ARC1680 reveal the problem
      (B) The problme occurred if SUPPORT_PERSISTENT_RESERVE is defined
      (C) The problem is the STACK overflow if write through
      (D) Change stack size for All IOP348 models
2010-10-20
    1 Fix reportlun command to exclude FAILED and FOREGROUND init volume
2010-10-21
    1 ARC1680:Add LARGE_DEV_LBA support
2010-10-22
    1 SAS2 target mode:ARC8040/8066/8366
2010-10-28
    1 Fix MRVL5182 based more than 2TB hdd support
2010-11-3
    1 ARC1682:Add over 2TB hdd support
2010-11-5
    1 ARC1680:remove VerifyDrive to support seagate SED drive
2010-11-25
    1 Add NO_UPS_STATUS for enclosure.c to remove ENC without UPS status
    2 Patch supermicro SES problem, unsupported power state report value 6
2010-11-30
    1 Add rename raidset name support
    2 Port ARC1880 subsystem
    4 Add NEW_MAIL_ALERT_CONFIG to support different mail alert config for
      different mail account
2010-12-2
    0 V1.49 20101202
    1 All PCI/E HBA models (except 1880)
2010-12-10
    1 V1.49 20101210
    2 ARC1880

Looks like official/full HP SAS expander support as well?
 
houkouonchi said:
Looks like official/full HP SAS expander support as well?
Click to expand...

Thanks to the HP expander I sent them to keep on hand as a test unit. I think they basically just confirmed what we already knew "oh look, it works." Even though they market their own Areca branded expander (with a chip OEM'd from LSI), I stressed to them how popular the HP expander has become among Areca owners.

I did have an ulterior motive in sending the test unit, which was for them to address any quirks and compatibility issues quicker, as well as have expander compatibility for new Areca products out of the gate. For example, I think the HP expander negotiates 6G SATA drives down to 3G when attached to an 1880 series card, even with no 3G SATA drives on the chain. Issues like that will hopefully get addressed quicker with a test unit on hand.
 
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odditory said:
Here's a link to the latest v1.49 firmware files for Areca 1280/1680/1880 series cards. As a reminder, you need to upload all four .BIN files contained in the zip file to the card, with the Areca web-based managment GUI, then reboot.

1280: ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1280/149-20101202.zip
1680: ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1680/149-20101202.zip
1880: ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1880/149-20101210.zip
Click to expand...

Indeed and it takes a while to flash to. I am starting by flashing 5-10 machines a day for a little bit and once no problems are noticed I will probably be flashing all 500 of our machines with areca controllers =) I already wrote a script to flash the controller so I can do it with a one-liner.
 
odditory said:
Thanks to the HP expander I sent them to keep on hand as a test unit. I think they basically just confirmed what we already knew "oh look, it works." Even though they market their own Areca branded expander (with a chip OEM'd from LSI), I stressed to them how popular the HP expander has become among Areca owners.

I did have an ulterior motive in sending the test unit, which was for them to address any quirks and compatibility issues quicker, as well as have expander compatibility for new Areca products out of the gate. For example, I think the HP expander negotiates 6G SATA drives down to 3G when attached to an 1880 series card, even with no 3G SATA drives on the chain. Issues like that will hopefully get addressed quicker with a test unit on hand.
Click to expand...

do you think that any quirks they did resolve on the HP card would apply to any other expander card that uses the same LSI chip, such as the Astek A33606?
 
Note, if you crawl up the URL path there are updates for a lot of other cards too, like my 1260:
ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/ARC1260

The release notes are here: ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIOS_Firmware/release_note.txt

I'm glad to see support for renaming raidsets. That bit me in the ass once already, as I accidentally screwed one up because two had the same name. It could be a little better as you don't see enough detail on the rename screen to be able to tell exactly which set you're affecting. Especially if the sets all have the same size.

Haven't tried it yet but being able to tailor alerts to different e-mail addresses could be handy.
 
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if you scroll up a few posts you'll see houkouonchi already posted that changelog. and yeah rename raidset is good since a lot of people use the "quick create" function which gives it a very generic name. technically you can have all your raidsets named the same, you just have to have them on different LUNs.
 
Does ARC-1880 will support SSD TRIM in the future firmware or plan to implement this feature?
 
I'm not sure that this is a firmware change for Areca or any RAID manufacturer since they use the built in Storport driver.
 
@dirtrider:

1) in the HP expander thread, I didn't mean what firmware is your Areca card, I meant what firmware rev are your drives - specifically the Seagate 1.5TB's. CC1H?

2) Which drives are dropping - specific ones, or just random?

3) Try scaling back the power management settings, at least temporarily to see if trouble goes away. Stagger Power On Control = 0.7, Low Power Idle = Disabled and Time To Spin Down Idle HDD = 60

4) Load latest Areca firmware. Scroll up on this page to post# 746

5) Are you running the card in JBOD mode?

6) When a drive 'drops' what exactly does it say in the event log? I assume it says "Timeout" and that's usually related to power management settings set too aggressively, at least in my experience. Also not all of your drives support low power idle - in general most drives don't except Hitachi's, so having that enabled may also be contributing to the problem.
 
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:D

Areca 1880i - 8x2TB Hitachi 7K2000 - 128k stripe, 2MB Block Size HDTune

raid6read.jpg


raid6write.jpg


Does that look about right?
 
Hi Odditory,

Thanks for the quick feedback. I will try all you suggested and report back. Yes it is JBOD mode. The reason for my power mgmt settings is that all those drives are media drives actually in use maybe 1% of the time. So I basically intended to spin them down and not even use them most days. I use this as my primary pc and it is on for most of the day since I rdp to it from work too. I am more than happy to try it for a while with all drive spinning all the time though.

Firmware:
1. Seagate 1.5TB ST31500341AS - CC1H
2. SAMSUNG 1.5TB HD154UI - 1AG01118
3. WD 2TB WD20EARS-00MVWB0 - 50.0AB50

Random Drives Failing:
RaidError1.jpg

RaidError2.jpg


Original Settings:
RaidAreca1880i.jpg

RaidAreca1880iPowerMgt.jpg

RaidAreca1880iSAS.jpg

RaidAreca1880iDrives.jpg
 
I didn't suggest not spinning the drives down at all - 60 minutes was a suggestion since it reduces unnecessary cycles and extends the life of the drive. Mainly I wanted you to get rid of low-power-idle setting, and the aggressive 0.4 spinup setting. I have seen too low a spinup value result in "Timeouts" in the event log, because the array controller expects a response back from the drive quicker than its able to spin up and be at attention. If 0.7 doesn't work and you see more Timeouts in the event log (I'd be surprised) then try 1.0 seconds.

The CC1H on the Seagate 1.5TB's are fine, earlier revs were problematic which is why I asked. I've never experienced even a single timeout or hiccup on my 8 x 1.5TB CC1H drives in RAID5, and I have always run them with 0.7 spinup.

That said, this COULD all still be the fault of the expander, or cabling, or a number of things. But hopefully the different power settings will eliminate that as a culprit.
 
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I just updated the firmware. All 4 files as directed. I see a count indicator in seconds at boot that wasn't there before. The other strange issue I always had with this expander card and the prior one is that it will not ever boot the first time when powered on. The firmware times out. Now, with the counter, it shows it goes all the way up to 300 and then resets and then finally boots at around the 30 second mark. I have tried this at .7 and 1.0 seconds spinup.
 
Yes, the firmware counter is a new feature. My guess is those WD20EARS drives are what's holding it back from booting first time. I say that because I have 4 x 300GB WD Velociraptor drives that, when connected, the firmware won't initialize. If I connect them after the firmware initializes its fine. Weird bug I think but haven't cared about testing it more since I'm selling the drives. Try disconnecting the WD20EARS and see if there's a change in the firmware boot behavior. Also try disconnecting the Samsung if the there's no change when the WD's are disconnected, since that's the only other unique drive.
 
Looks like areca removed the firmware from the main site now? I wonder why. Areca hasn't responded to like the last 5 emails I sent them. Not sure if they aren't getting them or what.
 
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