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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