help identifying gmirror, ata,
or motherboard problem (Tyan S2865G2NR)
Jeremy Chadwick
koitsu at FreeBSD.org
Wed Nov 15 16:49:39 PST 2006
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 01:43:10PM -0800, George Hartzell wrote:
> Just to follow up on this, Maxtor asked if the board used an Nvidia
> controller (it does...) and then claimed that a newer rev. of their
> firmware for these drives would work better.
>
> They're shipping a replacement drive. We'll see....
>
> Thanks for all the feedback.
I can confirm this problem, and it's documented all over the web,
from forums to blogs to Maxtor's own site. Maxtor won't admit to
it being a "bug", instead stating it's a "compatibility issue"
with nVidia chipsets. They will only replace a drive with this
firmware if the customer calls and complains about the exact
issue and knows of the nVidia compatibility problem. It also
helps to refer to the support ID# (or whatever it's called)
when calling them, otherwise they claim they have no knowledge
of it.
Maxtor would not send me a firmware, nor an updater application,
for the drive.
I got Maxtor to send me a replacement drive, and it did fix the
problem. However, the NCQ feature of the drive is essentially
disabled (not like it matters much; read StorageReview's review
of NCQ/TCQ for details).
This problem (amongst many others) have pretty much put me off of
ever buying another Maxtor drive as long as I live, and have made
me extra wary of nVidia's SB (southbridge) chipsets. I expect a
drive manufacturer + ATA interface company to test their drives
thoroughly on all mainstream vendors' southbridges. Test means
weeks upon weeks of constant pounding, in RAID arrays and in
single systems. This kind-of bug should've been caught
immediately, and never made it to the consumer market.
--
| Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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