Perc 5i + 64bit Vista = problems?

NeonFlak

NeonFlak

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 11, 2004
Messages
316
I just received a Perc with BBU and 256mb cache.

My file server is running Vista Business 64bit. All pcs on my home network are Vista Business 64bit. I have the Perc setup with a single raid 5 array of 4x 750gb Samsung F1. Flash to LSI v61 firmware, using the latest Vista 64bit drivers from LSI. Array is setup as a GPT in vista as it is over 2tb, but still as a basic disk type.
Stripe size is 128kb
Read - adaptive
Write - back
I/O - direct
disk cache policy - unchanged (default option)

I have tried various different settings, MSM shows everything is operational. The problem, I have all my pcs download everything directly to their mapped drive which is the raid 5 array. Everything downloaded to the raid 5 array from a network pc is corrupt. Doing downloads on the file server itself doesn't work either. I also have remote differential compression turned off on every pc just for shits and giggles.

None of my pcs will start with only one stick of ram, and I don't have another 256mb stick to test with. So I am not sure if the ram is bad. Just looking for some suggestions?


Thanks
 
I'm currently running vista ultimate 64bit and perc 5...everything seems run fine..no corrupted files and everything..I just expanded my raid 5 to 4 x 1TB Seagate. so I had to convert it to gpt and I copied out everything back and forth and nth got corrupted so far..

But u said 'both pc won't boot with 1 stick of ram'???? whatzup with that?
What kinda motherboard nb chipset is that? coz u know perc 5 has a habit of messing with intel chipset mobo. Sometimes gotta cover up the 5 and 6pin on perc 5
 
Perc 5i + everything = problems. I see more "issue" threads with this controller than... any other. Ever. Why do people love the damn things so much? Everything from driver issues to taping over some of the contacts in order to get them to work on some boards. Seems insane.
 
Why does it matter if none of your PCs will start with only one stick of RAM or not? Besides the fact that the last time I saw a PC like that it was in the 386-P1 era, you have more than one PC and saving data on the file server doesn't work. Pull a stick from another PC and try it in the controller, or try the controller's RAM in one of the PCs.
 
If I take the 256mb cache from the perc and put it in any of my pcs the pc won't boot, I don't have any other 256mb sticks to use with it as a pair. If I put it in with any of my other ram the pc doesn't boot. They are all intel chipsets, p945, p35, p45, x38. I haven't tried using the ddr2 from a pc on the perc, I'll try that when I get home. Though all my ddr2 are 2gb sticks.
 
is it just downloads that are corrupt?
what if you just copy a file from a network PC to the RAID5?
 
NeonFlak said:
If I take the 256mb cache from the perc and put it in any of my pcs the pc won't boot, I don't have any other 256mb sticks to use with it as a pair. If I put it in with any of my other ram the pc doesn't boot. They are all intel chipsets, p945, p35, p45, x38. I haven't tried using the ddr2 from a pc on the perc, I'll try that when I get home. Though all my ddr2 are 2gb sticks.
Click to expand...


AFAIK, the memory on the PERCS are ECC and may even be registered.. May not work in a consumer level board..

Riley
 
Yeah, hit myself on the head after I posted about testing the memory.

And yes it seems to only be downloads. I can download a file to a pc and then copy it to the array and it's fine. Samething on the server, I can't download off the internet directly to the array but I can download a file to the OS drive and then copy that file to the array and it's fine.

I am recreating the VD as a raid10 array to see what happens.
 
See that would tell me that it has something to do with how its being downloaded, or something on a software level.
If it were a hardware level issue it would corrupt data regardless of how it got onto the array.
 
Yeah, do you use any download managers? What antivirus software are you using? Try turning off the real-time scanning and then see if your download works OK.

This doesn't look like a hardware issue..

Riley
 
All my pcs use FF, no extra download managers. The fileserver is the only pc that runs AV and the realtime scanner only scans on reads. I will uninstall it and see if corruption on file downloads still occur.
 
silent-circuit said:
Perc 5i + everything = problems. I see more "issue" threads with this controller than... any other. Ever. Why do people love the damn things so much? Everything from driver issues to taping over some of the contacts in order to get them to work on some boards. Seems insane.
Click to expand...

Well..... They are designed for DELL servers. Of course there can be issues with non Dell systems. You can't just buy it blind without doing research.

What we see in these "damn things" is an OEM version of a $600 LSI raid card that we can get for a third the price. The card does SAS/SATA with hardware RAID and has an expandable cache memory. It's a super deal in my opinion.
 
Neon....are you using Firefox 3.XX?

Only reason I ask is because FF 3 breaks up downloads into parts(threads) so it can dl faster...this breaking apart of the dl in addition to using raid could be the issue.

Try downloading a file from IE to the RAID Volume and see if you get the corruption still.
 
Yes it is FF3.0.3, if that's true didn't know it did that. I will try with IE and see what happens.

Though I have none of these problems using Raid 0 from the perc or Raid 5 from the ICH9R. Have it doing a full init on a raid10 array just to see if that has corruption like Raid 5 does on the perc for me. Barring those results I will try Raid 5 again and use IE to do downloads to see what happens.
 
I have a Skultrail system with 6 tb (six 1tb) drives in it. It is running vista 64 pro. is there any way to set the drives to Raid 5 with Parity? Every time I try it gives me a limit of 2tb and says I can't. IF you can, can you explain STEP BY STEP, exactly how to do this? I am not as familiar as I should be with this stuff.

Thank you, Dinodude64
 
I haven't had the corruption issue happen with it as a raid10 array. Will do it all over again as Raid5 and use IE for downloading and see what happens.
 
These may be obvious, but:

1. Are the firmwares matched on all of the drives? I've had problems with
data corruption on my Adaptec if the firmwares mismatched on my 500gb seagates.
Maybe the 5th drive is causing issues?

The only other thing I can think of, a download from the Internet is relatively
slow compared to a direct disk-copy from OS drive to RAID. Thus, something
about this low-speed disk access might be causing problems, although
logically it should be the other way around.

2. Which slot is the RAID controller connected to?
Is it a PCI-E slot directly connected to the northbridge,
or a southbridge slot? I've had problems with RAID controllers
not working properly in southbridge (ICH9R) provided lanes.

3. Could be bad system RAM. Bad system RAM always causes inscrutable secondary problems that often cause you to go on a wild goose chase blaming everything else...
 
The system ram I have tested with memtest and it never generates errors. I did however speak too soon, downloads to the raid10 array are always corrupt now too. The first one was fine, but ever since they have all been corrupt. AV has been completely uninstalled since yesterday. Going to try in IE in a second before redoing the array again.

The perc is in the single 16x pci-e slot. Will check the drives firmwares and update.
 
I'm not familiar with the perc options, but is there an option to disable read/write cache in the bios or raid management? Maybe if you bypass the cache memory, it might isolate the problem.

I assume downloading to just a normal drive works fine? I.e. the NICs are good - I had a flaky wireless adaptor return corrupted data without the OS throwing any warning.
 
It may be a firmware issue. Went to an older firmware and have had zero problems so far.
 
I am surprised you couldn't test the percs memory in a PC. My nforce 650i (regular consumer board) had no problems taking a 512 MB registered ECC DIMM I tested with it just wasn't able to use the ECC features of the DIMM.
 
And I spoke too soon. On firmware v60 it seems to work fine right after creating the partition. But as soon as I copy the files from my backup drive to the array it starts corrupting downloads again.


@Nitro, finally tried IE to download. Using IE to download I haven't gotten a single corrupt file. But I think regardless of where you tell IE to download a file it downloads it to the user folder on your pc first and then transfers it to the file location. Where as FF is downloading it straight to the location. And I already knew that file transfers between the pcs were fine, it's only downloads from the internet directly to the array that are being corrupt.

Tried some other download managers, not sure if they download somewhere locally and then transfer the file like IE does. But so far it appears to only be the FF download manager that is corrupting files when going directly to the array. And it's only doing it with this particular array whether it's raid5 or raid10....
 
Some more clarification:

All the HDs have the same firmware. The array has been rebuilt countless times now and I've used v55 all the way to v61 firmware (v60 gives me the best write performance, which is what I'm using now). The "problem" occurs with every firmware.

With the array freshly created (each time it is created in bios and a full init is run) as either raid10 or raid5 I can download from FF v3.0.4 directly to the array without file corruption.

However, once I start copying my data back to the array and the array gets to 500gb+ in used space FF downloads directly to the array start to corrupt.

IE7 downloads are always fine, though as stated earlier no matter where you tell IE7 to download, it downloads everything to a temp directory on the local pc and then transfers the file to the download location. File transfers from the pcs to the array have no problems.

Are there any download managers that download directly to the location you tell it to? I've tried a couple now and they all download the same way as IE7.


So to summarize:
Right now it appears to be a problem only with FF's default download manager because it downloads directly to the download location. And it's only a problem once the array is around 500gb+ in used space.
 
Hey all... where do you guys all stand with Vista64 and this card ?? I am looking at running it with Vista Ultimate 64 bit on a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P board with a E5200 and 4 GB of Memory. Going to use 3x1.5 Seagate drives for storage in RAID5. Having issues still with this raid card or no? Thanks in advance for reading.
 
I use the Perc 5/i and Vista X64 on daily basis and works flawlessly.
640AAKSx4 Raid0

NeonFalks.
As someone suggested here, try to set the write method to WriteThrough and not WriteBack, it will bypass the Dram Module which will then tell you if it is the one corrupting the data.

Aside from that, I think its an issue with other OSes running on your other computers.
Maybe you need to perform additional network sharing setting, special for Drives larger than 2TB.

I agree it sounds like a Software problem and not a Hardware problem.
If it was hardware, you had corruption all over the place.
 
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