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

So after I create a raid set. Do I have to create volume set. Then mount under disk management? I don't understand the difference b/w raid set and volume set. I tried reading the manual but it has so much info.
 
Yes, the major steps are:

1) Create a RAID set. This is just a bundle of disks that can not be used for anything until you create one or more volume sets. A RAID set has no RAID level, can not be seen by the OS, etc. It is just a group of disks that you have told the controller will be used together as a set.

2) Create one or more volume sets. For each volume set, you pick the size, the RAID level, 64 bit LBA, etc. So, for example, on one RAID set you can have RAID0 volumes mixed with RAID5 volumes mixed with RAID6 volumes. I tend to make all my volumes RAID6, but you don't have to do it that way. Each volume set needs to be initialized before the OS can use it. You can do foreground initialization (faster, but the OS can not use it until initialization is complete) or background initialization (slower, but the OS can use it immediately, while it is still initializing, but with greatly reduced performance).

3) Now the OS can see the volume(s). Open the storage manager tool, tell it to rescan if it does not see the new volumes, initialize them to GPT, format them with intelligent allocation unit sizes (8k allows a 32 TB volume, 16k allows a 64 TB volume, etc. but don't use the default 4k for sure, as that will limit the volume to 16 TB max size).

Then you should be good to go. There is a lot in that manual, most of it is useful, google what you don't understand in there, and you should be able to figure out the basics of how you want to configure the card, etc.

Have fun.
 
xyzpdq said:
Yes, the major steps are:
...
2) Create one or more volume sets. For each volume set, you pick the size, the RAID level, 64 bit LBA, etc.
...
Click to expand...
Hi,

I'm curious what your volume is showing for the block size. I have the 1880i, and I'm sure I have it set at 64bit LBA (otherwise I can't even do a windows image onto the volume), but it indicated as 512Bytes.

Volume Set NameARC-1880-VOL#002
Volume Capacity 6000.0GB
Raid Level Raid 5
Stripe Size: 64KBytes
Block Size : 512Bytes
Member Disks 5
 
My Areca ARC-1680IX-24-4G SATA/300 RAID controller detects Vertex 4 64 GB as 6 Gbps however it works only in 1,5 Gbps mode. It should work in 3 Gbps mode.

attachment.php


How to correct this ?

My current speeds on RAID 0 with 2 drives are really slow about 260 MB/s.
 
Anyone know if an ARC-1320-4i4X will work with an Intel s1200BTLR board? Intel's RAID card list only lists Intel cards... and none of them fit what I was looking for. I've used multiple of the 12xx's in other boards and they've worked out great.
 
Spacedust said:
My Areca ARC-1680IX-24-4G SATA/300 RAID controller detects Vertex 4 64 GB as 6 Gbps however it works only in 1,5 Gbps mode. It should work in 3 Gbps mode.



How to correct this ?

My current speeds on RAID 0 with 2 drives are really slow about 260 MB/s.
Click to expand...
I'm guessing you're on some sort of expander by how it says "Enclosure 2" for location, don't be on an expander.
 
Perhaps it uses an older expander chip that throttles all devices to the speed of the slowest device. This is why my next RAID card is gonna be a series 7 areca, 16 real ports and SSD caching, yes please.
 
My Areca 1222 crashed (controller not recognised in the server, nor any other system, anymore). I had two disks in RAID1 configuration. I had a spare Areca 1220 (but not 1222), but it can't recognise any RAID volumes on the two disks, I'm guessing the 1220 can't recognise the RAID volume since the "equivalent" to the 1222 would be the 1212?

As a last ditch effort, I thought that I could just mount one separately on another system, to access and mount the partition to get some data. Unfortunately, Ubuntu can't recognise any valid partitions on either disk, I assume Areca writes it's RAID1 volume signature in such a way that the normal areas for partition signature are not there?

Anybody have any ideas on how I can access the data, e.g. is it still possible to mount the disk in Ubuntu, bypassing the RAID1 signature (i.e. like a dd skip=headersizeinblocks if=/dev/disk1 of=/dev/newdisk then mount the "newdisk")? It's chinese new year, so Areca in Taiwan support is closed the whole week :(

Thanks for any comments and help!
 
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Hi!

I have a arc-1880i card with intel RES2SV240 as a expander. The raidcard and the expander is linked together with an 8087 - 8087 cable into port1 on the intel expander.
I have 12x 2TB samsung drives (samsung hd204iu) connected in port 2-3and 4 on the intel RES2SV240 expander.

All have been good for like 1 years or soo.
Soo the raid with 12x samsung drives are still ok.

Here is the problem:


Yesterday I was connected 4 more drives:

2x seagate 750gb st3750640as firmware 3.afm
1x seagate 1000gb st31000340ns firmware sn05
1x seagate 1000gb st31000333as firmaware sd15



I used a 8087 to sata cable for those drives. The drives are not going to join the raid i have from before (the 12x2tb samsungs. The problem is that i cant see the drives i have connected. I used port 5 on the expander, i even tried port 6, but whit the same results.
Even the second port on the areca raid controller seems to detect those drives.
Ofc all drives are powered on etc.
Even tried to a new cable too.


Soo what is wrong?
 
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An update for the Windows 8/2012 (64-bit) driver snuck out 11/01/2013; 6.20.00.25.

Love the patch notes:
"Bug fix low performance issue in storport".

Also it appears the latest bios for Supermicro X9SCM-F 2.0b and the areca 1882i bios 1.51 201209 (it was updated after release without a version bump damnit) just work correctly after Supermicro broke compadibility with any PCIe slot other than #4.
 
Hi all

Having a few issues with my 1680D-IX-24 card where 6Gb/s drives don't always show/drop out on ports 1though to 8

Think I need to upgrade my expander firmware

This is my current version...
SAS Expander info
Vender : Areca Technology Co Ltd. Taiwan, R.O.C
Model : ARC-8011
Serial No. : Y943CABWAR800720
Unit Serial:
SAS address: 0x5001B4D7035FB03F
Customer : 0x95
Port Num. : 36
Chip Rev. : A01
BOOT Rev. : 05.3A.1.22 07/23/08
Firmware : 05.63.1.32 05/26/09
CFG Data : 0x06
GAL ID : 0x95
Work Time : 0: 5: 0

Could someone point me to where the correct firmware is for my controller, all I can find on the FTP site is these two versions, where I seem to have 8011
ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/ExpanderBox/
 
Areca have confirmed with me that its the 8020 firmware required for the 1680 card.

There are two files which can be updated
romXXXX.bin
mfghbaYYY.bin

I can successfully transfer the .bin file, but when trying to transfer the .rom file it always freezes on sector 128.
Have redownloaded it but still getting the same issue.

Code: 
Port /dev/ttyS0                                                                      
         +-----------[xmodem upload - Press CTRL-C to quit]------------+             
Press CTR|Sending mfgdat1101223.rom, 1088 blocks: Give your local XMODE|             
         |M receive command now.                                       |             
         |Xmodem sectors/kbytes sent: 128/16k                          |             
  Passwor| Retry 0: Timeout on sector ACK                              |             
  Passwor|                                                             |             
CLI>sy   |                                                             |             
 Vender  |                                                             |             
 Model   +-------------------------------------------------------------+

This is all via minicom transferring using xmodem modeat the Ubuntu command line, am I doing something wrong?!


This happens in HyperTerminal on windows xp too
 
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jcruz015 said:
Hello,

I'm having some performance/reliability issues with my Areca ARC-1231 running Server 2008 R2. It's roughly 2 years old. As far as I was concerned, everything was running fine up until about a year ago. Some basic current system information:

Firmware Version: V1.49
Drives: 5xWestern Digital WD15EADS, 2x Samsung HD154UI, 1xWD20EFRX

Anyways, I started running into a situations where transfers involving the ARC-1231, especially writes, would be extremely slow (kB/s). On occasions I've had complete system hangs for a period of time, a couple times needing a system restart to fix. Reads are generally fine, unless I try to write something to the disk. Then, of course, the array will hang. Thinking that there was some system/OS/driver issue, I reinstalled OS. Then I swapped out the last two drives I had added, thinking that was the issue, which did nothing as well. The issue seems to be getting worse.

The Areca event log doesn't list any problems. Consistency checks have all come back fine. Server 2008 event viewer does have this entry: "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2" but I don't know if that means anything. My only guess is that one of my drives is dying.

Any thoughts or help is appreciated
Click to expand...

I guess I didn't provide enough information to get a response. I'll still post what ended up being the problem. Two of my drives were dying. I've rebuilt w/ WD Red 3TB in Raid 6 and everything is back to normal.
 
Hello,

First, I just want to mention that I'm a total noob. :(

I've read through and searched as much of this thread as I can stand, and have found no answer to my problem. I was hoping some of the experts here could chime in.

I have an ARC-1222 with 8 WD Green 2TB HD's in a RAID 6. Recently, the card started making a frantic "bik-bik-bik-bik" sound. Like 4 "bik's" per second. The log stated the array was degraded, and that there were 7/8 disks, even though 8 physical drives were connected. Through trial and error, I discovered which drive was in error, used WD's warranty service, and was given a new drive. I did a quick format, and installed the drive. But the card still makes the "bik" sound, and still shows 7/8 drives, and a degraded array. The user's manual was not very helpful. It sort of seemed like the array was supposed to rebuild itself?? How do I get the array back online again?? Once again, sorry if this is soo obvious, but from my research, I cannot find the solution. :confused: Just to clarify, the array IS still functional, and I can access my data. Thanks for any help.
 
If the array isn't rebuilding, mark the new drive as a hot spare.
 
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You need to tell the controller what to do with the drive.

If you mark it as a hot spare, it should automatically start rebuilding.

EDIT: someone beat me to it lol
 
nry said:
You need to tell the controller what to do with the drive.

If you mark it as a hot spare, it should automatically start rebuilding.

EDIT: someone beat me to it lol
Click to expand...

Is it really that simple??

So if I mark it as a 'hot spare', and the array rebuilds, will it still be a RAID6? Or will it be something like RAID5 + 1 spare??

Thanks!
 
I wanted to check and see what the best 24-port 6Gb/s SATA3 Expander card was for an Areca 1680 or 1882. I currently have the 1680ix-24, but will slowly be moving to an 1882ix + expander to make future Areca card upgrades easier. I'll be connecting to 1 internal sff-8087 port and will hook up 24 drives using 1 expander card.

I have read up on the HP SAS Expander and can get it for $225, but it seems to only be SATA2, meaning 1.2GB/s max through a SAS line (4xSATA2). I was hoping to utilize 2.4GB/s through 4xSATA3, in case I ever expand through the external port with more drives.

Is the new Chenbro CK23601 for $315 a good one to use? How about the Intel RES2CV360 for $325?
 
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My first post, I hope this turns out well. I have an Asus p8z77-v pro motherboard. I just flashed the bios a couple versions higher to one which I've read is quite stable. Well my ARC-1222 raid card (on firmware 1.49) is not having its array mounted in Windows. It's attached to eight 2tb Caviar Blacks in RAID 5. The card is showing properly in device manager under disk drives and storage controllers but the volume under Windows 7 (64 bit) Disk Management represents it as Disk 0 Dynamic Invalid. If I select activate I get "this operation is not allowed on the invalid disk pack" I also tried offlining it and putting back online. No luck. The array shows as Normal and drives as Normal in Archttp. I had loaded optimized defaults when I flashed the motherboard bios although I didn't remove the card during the flash (maybe I should have?) In any event, how do I get this array to mount? Areca tech support said to check with Asus and Asus has not responded. I really would like to stay with this bios version since it's newer and has good reviews. If not, then I'll down flash and see what happens. Thanks in advance.
 
Raventerp said:
My first post, I hope this turns out well. I have an Asus p8z77-v pro motherboard. I just flashed the bios a couple versions higher to one which I've read is quite stable. Well my ARC-1222 raid card (on firmware 1.49) is not having its array mounted in Windows. It's attached to eight 2tb Caviar Blacks in RAID 5. The card is showing properly in device manager under disk drives and storage controllers but the volume under Windows 7 (64 bit) Disk Management represents it as Disk 0 Dynamic Invalid. If I select activate I get "this operation is not allowed on the invalid disk pack" I also tried offlining it and putting back online. No luck. The array shows as Normal and drives as Normal in Archttp. I had loaded optimized defaults when I flashed the motherboard bios although I didn't remove the card during the flash (maybe I should have?) In any event, how do I get this array to mount? Areca tech support said to check with Asus and Asus has not responded. I really would like to stay with this bios version since it's newer and has good reviews. If not, then I'll down flash and see what happens. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Have you tried changing the SCSI Channel:SCSI ID:SCSI Lun on the volume set? I had a similar problem in XP a while back where I recall changing one of the values (sorry forgot which one, maybe SCSI Lun?) allowed Windows to recognize the volume.
 
RayH said:
Have you tried changing the SCSI Channel:SCSI ID:SCSI Lun on the volume set? I had a similar problem in XP a while back where I recall changing one of the values (sorry forgot which one, maybe SCSI Lun?) allowed Windows to recognize the volume.
Click to expand...

It's a pciE raid card and not a scsi one. So I don't have a setting like that.
 
Raventerp said:
It's a pciE raid card and not a scsi one. So I don't have a setting like that.
Click to expand...
PCIe is a bus and separate from SCSI...which your card is anyway by the way. SAS = serial attached SCSI. You do have settings like that under the volume set options like mentioned.
 
LUNs are assigned by the SCSI miniport driver or the directstore driver. It's a convention that's used by storage drivres even when SCSI isn't in the physical access chain.
 
Blue Fox said:
PCIe is a bus and separate from SCSI...which your card is anyway by the way. SAS = serial attached SCSI. You do have settings like that under the volume set options like mentioned.
Click to expand...

You're right. I'll have to look into that setting. To me it's not intuitive as to what to set it to.
 
Xysters said:
:eek:

Thank you all! First thing I will do when I get home!!
Click to expand...

Blue Fox said:
Yes, that easy. It will still be RAID6.
Click to expand...

Hi :)

I just wanted to post a follow-up. Thanks for all the help guys. Did exactly what you said, worked like a charm. Again, sorry it was such a noob question, but glad the solution was so simple.

Off topic, but man, 4TB drives are getting pretty affordable!!
 
ARC-1882-ix-16 pass through disk not seen

Mac Pro 2009
Areca 1882ix16 with 1 OCZ VECTOR AND 1 WD 600 GB Velociraptor configured in pass through mode.
The controller sees correctly both disks without any problem.
Ok, in pass through both disk are not visible by os x 10.8.3 and windows 8 64.
To use the disks i have to configure raid 0 for each one.
Last firrmware, last driver.

Some experience about it?
Thank you
 
moffeloffen said:
Hi!

I have a arc-1880i card with intel RES2SV240 as a expander. The raidcard and the expander is linked together with an 8087 - 8087 cable into port1 on the intel expander.
I have 12x 2TB samsung drives (samsung hd204iu) connected in port 2-3and 4 on the intel RES2SV240 expander.

All have been good for like 1 years or soo.
Soo the raid with 12x samsung drives are still ok.

Here is the problem:


Yesterday I was connected 4 more drives:

2x seagate 750gb st3750640as firmware 3.afm
1x seagate 1000gb st31000340ns firmware sn05
1x seagate 1000gb st31000333as firmaware sd15



I used a 8087 to sata cable for those drives. The drives are not going to join the raid i have from before (the 12x2tb samsungs. The problem is that i cant see the drives i have connected. I used port 5 on the expander, i even tried port 6, but whit the same results.
Even the second port on the areca raid controller seems to detect those drives.
Ofc all drives are powered on etc.
Even tried to a new cable too.


Soo what is wrong?
Click to expand...

Double checked its a forward breakout cable?

Ive had this issue in the past and turned out it was the incorrect cable (reverse breakout cable rather then forward breakout cable)
 
Anyone know if all the failures associated with the 1222 (namely power regulation wasn't it?) have been fixed on the later PCB versions? I've found myself in possession of a card that says it's version 1.2 and want to know if I should hang onto it. Maybe houkouonchi knows?
 
Has anyone seen any strange behavior with the ArcHTTP software and Windows 2012?

My 1882 card keeps disappearing from ArcHTTP (i.e. it's no longer listed under SAS RAID controllers section) after about a day of uptime. The card still appears to be working fine and the drives don't disappear, but it won't let me manage the card again unless I reboot.

I've tried reinstalling ArcHTTP, but that had no effect. I've also tried going direct to the cards ip/port, but that just times out.

Running the latest Windows 2012 driver (6.20.00.25) and ArcHTTP (V2.2.3) as well as the latest firmware release (1.51).

Very odd.
 
Anyone have any idea when and for how much the ARC-8026MB will be available? The only results on google are Areca's site and a Swedish shop that lists it for $44 (unsure on accuracy considering only two hits on google).
 
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