Promise SATA controller / Maxtor drive problems

[DAve]

Øyvind Skaar wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> I've got a Promise SATAII 150 TX2plus (pci) controller connected to my 
> Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard.
> The drive in question is a Maxtor 6B200M0.
> 

I had 6 Maxtor SATA drives running under FreeBSD 5.2.1 up to 5.4. 
Installed on three mail servers. After 6 months and 7 drive swaps I had 
my vendor send Seagate drives and all my problems disappeared. Issues 
varied from drives just "falling off" to DMA issues, to drives showing 
as corrupted and then testing good at the vendor after being returned.

These were Maxtor 6Y080M0 and 6Y160MO drives. Running under onboard SATA 
or Highpoint Rocket Raid cards. Systems are SuperMicro, three servers 
delivered at the same time, one server was replaced after 3 months but 
problems continued until it's drives were replaced as well (the 
replacement server came with Maxtor drives installed again).

I tested for cable issues, Goggled for FreebSD issues, updated the 
kernel, BIOS changes, drive settings, heat issues, etc. No joy. With no 
other changes than an upgrade to Seagate drives the systems have run 
without intervention for 11 months now. These are high traffic mail 
toasters.

The Maxtor drives were problematic for us from the start, and not even 
heavy enough to make good door stops.

DAve

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