Marvel AOC-SASLP-MV8 - 8 Sata PCI-E 4x non-raid controller card

I have this card and I'm not sure how to make it to I don't have to wait so long for it to do what it does?
It checks ports, spins up hards drives separately etc adding a lot of time to load time for comp. How do I make it as fast as possible? (there's only 2 HDs on the card and they are not the OS drive)
 
Madalienmonk said:
I have this card and I'm not sure how to make it to I don't have to wait so long for it to do what it does?
It checks ports, spins up hards drives separately etc adding a lot of time to load time for comp. How do I make it as fast as possible? (there's only 2 HDs on the card and they are not the OS drive)
Click to expand...

Nealy all controllers do this. They spin drives up one at a time to reduce the load on the PSU. There really isnt much you can do that i know of.
 
Port checking is standard on any decent card, the spinup delay between drives is sometimes configurable, but AFAIK there are no enterprise/workstation level controllers that let you turn off staggered spinup. Of course, that's just in my experience.
 
Just wanted to submit to this thread that this card works in the primary slot of the gigabyte m57sli-s4 motherboard without issue, when I order the second card I will post if it works with both in there or not, however I don't expect any issues. I have a PCI video card installed just FYI.
 
Just bought the card, installed on an Asus P5Q PCI-E slot, recognized, installed drivers, all seems o.k.
When I attach one, two or three drives the system hangs up. File conflicts, etc, as if the drives are not recognized.
Of course the drives are full of data.
Do I need to attach empty drives on the card and use the normal procedure to add them to the pool.
Is it a prerequisite in order for the drives to function?
Your help is greatly appreciated.


Andreas
 
pettakos said:
Just bought the card, installed on an Asus P5Q PCI-E slot, recognized, installed drivers, all seems o.k.
When I attach one, two or three drives the system hangs up. File conflicts, etc, as if the drives are not recognized.
Of course the drives are full of data.
Do I need to attach empty drives on the card and use the normal procedure to add them to the pool.
Is it a prerequisite in order for the drives to function?
Your help is greatly appreciated.


Andreas
Click to expand...


You are reffering to WHS yes? If you want to use them for storage as a part of the shares it has by default then you would need to add it to the pool which means a format, so I'd recommend putting the data on other drives till thats done.

The drivers you need will be on the FTP site.

Some more details on your system's specs/software would be helpful.
 
Yes, I am referring to whs.
System:
m/b Asus P5Q
CPU iNTEL e4400
4g ram
3 pci sata controllers
total 13 hard drives (various capacities)= 9,06 TB
7 attached on the m/b sata connectors and the other 6 on the controllers.
The mainboard has only one pci-e slot, thereby I am using that one to install the aoc-saslp-mv8.
The idea is to get rid of the pci controllers.
Anyway, I think I have to attach empty drives to the add-on card.
As far as the drivers are concerned, I am using the ones that came with the card's cd-rom, with no issues.
Furthermore, I can't open the above link.
Could you please paste me supermicro's url?
 
pettakos said:
Yes, I am referring to whs.
System:
m/b Asus P5Q
CPU iNTEL e4400
4g ram
3 pci sata controllers
total 13 hard drives (various capacities)= 9,06 TB
7 attached on the m/b sata connectors and the other 6 on the controllers.
The mainboard has only one pci-e slot, thereby I am using that one to install the aoc-saslp-mv8.
The idea is to get rid of the pci controllers.
Anyway, I think I have to attach empty drives to the add-on card.
As far as the drivers are concerned, I am using the ones that came with the card's cd-rom, with no issues.
Furthermore, I can't open the above link.
Could you please paste me supermicro's url?
Click to expand...
Well the drives dont need to be empty. Thats rediculous.
Install the card with not drives attached. boot to windows. Install drivers. Reboot. shutdown. Attach drives. boot to windows.
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/Marvell/MV8/Windows/3.1.0.22/
 
That's exactly what I did at least three times, and it keeps on hanging or requiring a very long time to boot, if I attach drives on the card.
The problem arises by the time I try to attach drives.
The card itself is ok and running.
That's why I thought if it was relevant to mount the drives, probably one at a time, and let OS (Whs) add them to the pool.
Any idea why is that happening?
Is there a chance of a hardware conflict with the other controllers?
In device manager everything is ok.
 
It could be possible you have a conflict.

That is just really weird. The fact that there is Data on them or that they are pool drives or not should not matter.
I can swap a HDD from my mobos SATA ports to my SASLP with the system running and WHS doesnt even flinch.
 
You were absolutely right.
Anyway, I managed to install all of my drives to the controller.
It was probably due to a failing disk.
Removed it and whs is running smoothly.
So far so good.
 
Can somebody give me model of motherboard which works perfectly without any issues with this card. Basically plug it in, install drivers on WHS and you are good to go.

Thanks.
 
rmd3003 said:
Can somebody give me model of motherboard which works perfectly without any issues with this card. Basically plug it in, install drivers on WHS and you are good to go.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

It would be much easier to give you model numbers of boards that do not work with this card...your chances are pretty good.

But since you asked, I can confirm that it is perfect in a Biostar A760G-M2+. Coupled with almost any Athlon II X2 chip it makes a perfect WHS host. Reliable & low power.
 
where are you guys buying your cards at? the big name stores don't seem to have it
also, does it come with cables? if not, which ones do I need for a norco 4020?
 
PigLover said:
It would be much easier to give you model numbers of boards that do not work with this card...your chances are pretty good.

But since you asked, I can confirm that it is perfect in a Biostar A760G-M2+. Coupled with almost any Athlon II X2 chip it makes a perfect WHS host. Reliable & low power.
Click to expand...

This board is out of stock everywhere........
Maybe I should go with Supermicro board..............
 
any problems with stability? it doesn't look like the card has a bracket to screw into the case and could easily wobble around
seems kinda strange
 
EnderW said:
any problems with stability? it doesn't look like the card has a bracket to screw into the case and could easily wobble around
seems kinda strange
Click to expand...

No it comes with a bracket.

Just not pictured.
 
EnderW said:
where are you guys buying your cards at? the big name stores don't seem to have it
also, does it come with cables? if not, which ones do I need for a norco 4020?
Click to expand...
I bought my 3ware SFF8087OCF 1M cables on eBay for under $15 each w/free shipping. The product actually came from ewiz.com so the eBay seller is probably just the ewiz storefront. Shorter cables are also available if you don't want the 1 meter version.
 
Frys carrys these cables, 2 kinds actually. One from cables unlimited that is the EXACT same cable as these: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.18023 but with different packaging, Also the ones from DX come with a cover for the Mini-SAS plug so you dont have to worry about the shorting out anything or collecting dust if you install them before having enough cards, etc.

The other kind they sell comes from another company and it has a backplane connector and is cheaper (the backplane connector does not have to be used, its optional), however they rarely stock it.

If you don't mind waiting get the ones from DX, and make sure you enable bulk rates if you buy more than 2, it'll be cheaper overall and you get a tracking number which will at least let you know once its left china.
 
cavediver said:
I have two in mine. Andromeda As of tonight, I have all 20 drive bays populated with 2TB LP and Green drives.
Click to expand...
great thread
that's where I plan to get to eventually

my current motherboard only has 1 PCI-E slot, so I'm gonna try to make do with 1 of these supermicro controllers and my 2 x 4 port cheap syba pci controllers until WHS 2 comes out, then I'll upgrade the motherboard and CPU

the HX750W sure allows for neat cables, I went with the TX750W to save cash right now and about 70% of the cables are just gonna be tied up
not a big deal since there is plenty of room and it won't affect airflow

I'm also gonna be making some custom cable connections like you did
did something similar a long time ago for my P182 hard drive cage and looks so much cleaner

this norco 4020 actually has space for 22 hard drives so I have plenty of room to grow
would like to pick up a few of those 2TB Samsung drives, but newegg raised the price $30 to $180 so I'll wait a bit

curious why you went with a SSD for boot drive
don't see any reason performance-wise to do that
did you just want to keep the boot drive separate and fit the maximum number of hard drives possible in the case?
 
EnderW said:
would like to pick up a few of those 2TB Samsung drives, but newegg raised the price $30 to $180 so I'll wait a bit

curious why you went with a SSD for boot drive
don't see any reason performance-wise to do that
did you just want to keep the boot drive separate and fit the maximum number of hard drives possible in the case?
Click to expand...

I went with the SSD for the system drive, 1) because I could and 2) I wanted a small, fast, quiet, cool, and reliable drive.

I'm still unsure about the Samsung drives as of now. They run cooler than both the Seagate LP drives and the WD Green drives. I had to RMA one because it kept dropping out of the storage pool as missing (3 times). The other has been fine so far, but they're less than a month old.
 
cavediver said:
I went with the SSD for the system drive, 1) because I could and 2) I wanted a small, fast, quiet, cool, and reliable drive.

I'm still unsure about the Samsung drives as of now. They run cooler than both the Seagate LP drives and the WD Green drives. I had to RMA one because it kept dropping out of the storage pool as missing (3 times). The other has been fine so far, but they're less than a month old.
Click to expand...
does the 4220 have room for additional 3.5" drives outside of the 20 hotswap bays?

interesting on the samsung drives - I'll probably follow up with you in a few months before I buy any
 
4 of my connected drives keep dropping out of the pool at random. Maybe I have a loose cable somewhere? Hmm...
 
These are really stupid questions, but why would one want to get this controller card since it's non-RAID? Wouldn't you want RAID when you're using a multiple drives?
 
Sgt_Strider said:
These are really stupid questions, but why would one want to get this controller card since it's non-RAID? Wouldn't you want RAID when you're using a multiple drives?
Click to expand...

It's essentially perfect for software raid situations (or situations without raid) like running ZFS on solaris (although as far as I know, the card still lacks solaris support) or running WHS (no traditional raid, but uses lots of drives) because you aren't paying for hardware raid support you aren't going to use.
 
rogue_jedi said:
It's essentially perfect for software raid situations (or situations without raid) like running ZFS on solaris (although as far as I know, the card still lacks solaris support) or running WHS (no traditional raid, but uses lots of drives) because you aren't paying for hardware raid support you aren't going to use.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information. Now it makes perfect sense. I can see the advantages of this card and I'm now temped to pick one up for a 4-drive server that I'm thinking of building.

Let's put it like this, why would I want to use this card over a dedicated hardware RAID solution? I want to build either a RAID 5 or 6 array with either this card or a dedicated RAID controller. Any advantages to one or the other provided the CPU is fast enough? I'm thinking of going with one of the AMD Athlon X4 II's for the CPU in either a software or hardware RAID configuration.
 
If you want to do RAID there is no point in getting this card.
You are better off buying a RAID controller.
 
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