From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 16 14:52:12 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 43F0416A4CE for ; Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:52:12 -0800 (PST) Received: from agena.meridian-enviro.com (agena.meridian-enviro.com [207.109.235.133]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E0BC243FBF for ; Sun, 16 Nov 2003 14:52:10 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from rand@meridian-enviro.com) Received: from delta.meridian-enviro.com (delta.meridian-enviro.com [10.10.10.43])hAGMq9V91437; Sun, 16 Nov 2003 16:52:09 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from rand@meridian-enviro.com) Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 16:52:08 -0600 Message-ID: <87znewvsdj.wl@delta.meridian-enviro.com> From: "Douglas K. Rand" To: "Simon" In-Reply-To: <200311162142.hAGLgXV86401@agena.meridian-enviro.com> References: <871xs8xalt.wl@delta.meridian-enviro.com> <200311162142.hAGLgXV86401@agena.meridian-enviro.com> User-Agent: Wanderlust/2.10.1 (Watching The Wheels) SEMI/1.14.5 (Awara-Onsen) FLIM/1.14.5 (Demachiyanagi) APEL/10.6 MULE XEmacs/21.4 (patch 14) (Reasonable Discussion) (i386--freebsd) X-Face: $L%T~#'9fAQ])o]A][d7EH`V;"_;2K;TEPQB=v]rDf_2s% cc: Mike Tancsa Subject: Re: asr monitoring X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 22:52:12 -0000 Simon> I would contact 3ware about this and make sure you are running Simon> latest firmware on the drives and the controller as well as the Simon> motherboard. I know that I'm not at the most recent rev of the BIOS on the 3ware cards, but I'm also sure that I'm running different BIOS revs on all three cards. My experience in the past with 3ware support has been less than satisfactory. Sure, I'm not running a supported OS (yet), but the guy at 3ware is never very helpful. (It always seems to be the same guy.) Simon> The controller does ECC checks on all reads and writes, which Simon> is how it knows when a drive fails. FreeBSD should have very Simon> little to do with this as 3ware is a pure hardware RAID. I agree, but I haven't had much luck persuading 3ware of that view point. Simon> I would try fixing the problem before trying adaptec or any Simon> other brand, for that matter. You may end up with even worse Simon> problems. We've been fighting this problem for months now, and while I'd like to get it solved, I really need to get some systems up and into production. I've been doing some performance tests, and the Adaptec card falls pretty short of the 3ware card, most likely because of the 64 bit interface that the 3ware card has, and the Adaptec is only 32 bit. Simon> I heard more bad things about adaptec RAID than 3ware. This is not good news. :( Simon> It could very well be that several of your drives are bad and Simon> 3ware just can't pick up on it, but who knows, ask 3ware :-) I also thought that the drives were suspect. But after running IBM's drive fitness test, going so far as to have it erase the entire disk and then verify the media afterwards, all the disks pass this test.