SATA RAID Support

[Doug White]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005, Oliver Brandmueller wrote:

> Under heavy load (I/O load on the disks constantly over 200 tps, average
> at about 250 tps, peaks over 600 tps) a random drive disconnects from
> the RAID 10. After removing the drive from the config and rescanning the
> bus, the drive does not show up anymore. The only way to get the drive
> back is to unplug the drive (or switch the computer off, so that power
> is removed).  After that there is no problem to rebuild the RAID with
> the drive.

We were having problems with this even under light load, with Western
Digital SATA disks (not Raptors I don't think). In some cases all of the
disks would drop off the array. It was determined to be an incompatibility
between the controller (8506, I believe) and the motherboard (Tyan S2721).
We have many other systems with 3ware cards, but not that motherboard,
that function normally and the vendor was unable to resolve the issue
after repeated system/controller/disk/cable replacements. We eventually
returned the affected systems to the manufacturer.

-- 
Doug White                    |  FreeBSD: The Power to Serve
dwhite at gumbysoft.com          |  www.FreeBSD.org