ctviggen Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 I bought the following card, on what I remember was a recommendation from this forum as being a good SATA controller: StarTech.com 2 Port SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express SATA Controller Card The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GS8VA4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I just bought the same card in a 4-port version: StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express 2.0 SATA III 6Gbps RAID Controller Card with HyperDuo SSD Tiering - PCIe SATA 3 Controller Adapter The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BUC3N74/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Are these cards recommended or not? If these are not good cards, could someone recommend a 4-port SATA card to me? I ask because I have had my unraid server lock up on me a few times, but I have not been able to diagnose the issue. It does seem to be happening more after I got the 2-port card, but that could just be happenstance. Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 One of the reviews of your 4 port card mentions "Marvel" which is NOT recommended for unRAID v6 with virtualization options turned on in the MB bios. And in the manual for the 2 port card it also mentions "Marvel" so it would not be recommended either for unRAID v6 with virtualization. So if you can run with the virtualization options (particularly VT-d on Intel) but I suggest all virtualization options be off - then they would probably work. They would work with unRAID v5 - I used a two port marvel based card with unRAID v5. Quote Link to comment
ctviggen Posted October 1, 2017 Author Share Posted October 1, 2017 Thank you, Bob. I have unraid version 6.2.4. I looked in the manual for my motherboard (ASRock A55M-HVS), and this is the only mention of anything similar to virtualization: SVM When this option is set to [Enabled], a VMM (Virtual Machine Architecture) can utilize the additional hardware capabilities provided by AMD-V. The default value is [Enabled]. Configuration options: [Enabled] and [Disabled]. Does this sound like the virtualization you discussed? Thank you. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 It's actually VT-d that Bob's talking about, and using an FM1 processor, its highly doubtful that you're ever going to run a VM anyways. However, with any Marvel controller on unRaid v6 regardless of VT-d enabled or not you *may* get 5 recurring parity check errors depending upon which drives are attached to the controller. Your diagnostics and the detail it provides may help determine if you will be hit by this or not. Quote Link to comment
ctviggen Posted October 1, 2017 Author Share Posted October 1, 2017 Great, thank you. And I have been getting those 5 parity check errors...every time since I've installed the 2-port board. They seem innocuous, though. Are they? Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 7 minutes ago, ctviggen said: Great, thank you. And I have been getting those 5 parity check errors...every time since I've installed the 2-port board. They seem innocuous, though. Are they? Post your diagnostics. Decent chance you might be able to rearrange the drives to get rid of them. Any parity check error can potentially result in corrupted files when rebuilding a failed drive. Quote Link to comment
ctviggen Posted October 1, 2017 Author Share Posted October 1, 2017 That's very interesting. I do have two Seagate drives, though I'm not sure which controller they are on. I'll rearrange the drives to get them onto the motherboard. I just ran a parity check (have it set to run automatically every month), but I added a new drive so that I can convert from reiserfs to XFS. Once I finish the process of redoing one drive, I'll move the Seagate drives onto the motherboard, then run a parity check, then see if I get the same errors. I'll report back, though probably not until next weekend. Quote Link to comment
Squid Posted October 1, 2017 Share Posted October 1, 2017 The theory isn't Seagate per se. Its ATA8-ACS on drives >2TB on a Marvel Controller. Quote Link to comment
ctviggen Posted October 1, 2017 Author Share Posted October 1, 2017 Sorry, I saw the Seagate drives mentioned and thought that was it. Doing too many things at once (fixing toilet now, while checking posts and trying to convert drives over). Will review and fix, but it won't be until this weekend. Quote Link to comment
ctviggen Posted October 6, 2017 Author Share Posted October 6, 2017 Well, I converted all my drives to XFS. I had the 2-port controller, which was giving me the 5 errors upon a parity check (two parity drives). I had to add one more drive, so I bought a 4-port controller. I put the new drive and the 2 drives from the 2-port controller on the 4-port controller, but one didn't show up. Not having time to debug, I took the same two drives and put them back on the 2-port controller (though possibly not in the same order), and left the new one (the "swap" drive, not added to the array, used to copy from one drive to another) on the 4-port controller. All three drives showed up. I removed the second parity drive, converted three disks to XFS, and then added the "swap" drive to the system, and re-enabled the second parity drive. During this process, I ran a parity check with one parity drive and got no errors. After adding in the second parity drive again, the system ran a parity check/rebuilt the system, and I got no parity errors. So, as of now, the 5 errors caused by the 2-channel Startech SATA controller appear to be gone. I run a parity check monthly, and if anything comes up next month, I'll report back. Quote Link to comment
unevent Posted October 6, 2017 Share Posted October 6, 2017 On 10/1/2017 at 5:46 AM, ctviggen said: I bought the following card, on what I remember was a recommendation from this forum as being a good SATA controller: StarTech.com 2 Port SATA 6 Gbps PCI Express SATA Controller Card The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GS8VA4/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I just bought the same card in a 4-port version: StarTech.com 4 Port PCI Express 2.0 SATA III 6Gbps RAID Controller Card with HyperDuo SSD Tiering - PCIe SATA 3 Controller Adapter The link is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BUC3N74/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Are these cards recommended or not? If these are not good cards, could someone recommend a 4-port SATA card to me? I ask because I have had my unraid server lock up on me a few times, but I have not been able to diagnose the issue. It does seem to be happening more after I got the 2-port card, but that could just be happenstance. The StarTech 2 Port card uses Marvel 88SE9128 chipset. Forum search The StarTech 4 Port card uses Marvel 88SE9230 chipset. Forum search Typically Silicon Image and Asmedia chipsets have better support, Marvel are hit and miss. Quote Link to comment
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