> -----Original Message----- > From: linux-raid-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > [mailto:linux-raid-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jon Lewis > Sent: 02 August 2004 21:10 > To: Tim Small > Cc: linux-raid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Re: what is the best > multi-SATA-controller-on-a-single-board out there? > > On Mon, 2 Aug 2004, Tim Small wrote: > > > The Promise cards, are cheap, but only do 66Mhz/32 bit PCI > and provide > > four SATA ports, so they may not be well suited to some > boards.. Both > > chipsets were used with libata on 2.6 kernels, with a > mixture of s/w > > raid5, and s/w raid1. The only slight irritation is the > current lack > > of smartd support (pending libata driver support). > > With what distros / exactly which kernels? I've been testing > a system with 2 Promise SATA150 TX4's and 6 Maxtor 200gb SATA > drives in a supermicro (mb/chassis) system with 7 drive > hot-swap drive carrier. I've been having serious problems > and am having trouble telling if its hardware or software. > I've been trying both Whitebox (basically RH ES 3.0 which > uses a 2.4 kernel and includes libata but doesn't build it by > default) and Fedora Core 2, which supports the SATA hardware > by default. OS gets installed on smaller drives on the MB's > PATA controller. The big 6 drives are supposed to be SW > RAID5. The system usually locks up while building the array. > Today it got as far as nearly finishing the mke2fs on the > array when it locked up. > > Running badblocks on each 200gb drive individually, I got > errors on one of them once. When I reran badblocks on that > drive, I did not get errors. > I still can't get an array built/formatted (under whitebox > today) without the system locking up. > > So, I'm curious who else is using the SATA150 TX4 and with > which kernel/driver and whether they're having or have seen > any similar problems. Jon, I've got a very similar setup to you - 2 x SATA150 TX4 with 6 x Maxtor 250GB drives. I had exactly the same symptoms and I found it was caused by failing drives. I think I got a bad batch, or a bad supplier or something because I had three out of a batch of four fail. I got replacements from Maxtor (3 year warranty) and have not had any problems since. When you RMA their drives they ask that you download a utility called "powermax" and check out the drives before returning them - the utility gives you a failure code if the drive is bad. Try downloading it and running the quick test on your drives. I'll give you 5-1 that they will fail. R. -- http://robinbowes.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
