What is a good choice of sata-ii raid controller for freebsd?

[Charles Sprickman]

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007, Freddie Cash wrote:

> On Thursday 08 February 2007 08:52 am, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 12:47:10PM +0200, Clayton Milos wrote:
>>> I can highly recommend the Areca family of SATA-II controllers. I
>>> have a ARC-1110 (4 poort RAID controller) with 4x 320GB Western
>>> Digital SATA-II drives attached to it in a RAID5 configuration.
>
> The following is from my experience with 3Ware Escalade RAID controllers
> (7506-4LP, 9500S-8, 9550SX-8. 9550SX-12 single and multi-lane).
>
>> I have questions:
>> 1) Do these controllers, from a BIOS level, permit SMART commands
>>    to be sent directly to the drives (via pass(4)) so you can
>>    monitor drives for potential upcoming failures and perform
>>    drive tests, via smartctl?
>
> Don't know, never checked.

Yes:

[root at archive /usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools]# smartctl -a -d  3ware,0 
/dev/twa0
smartctl version 5.37 [i386-portbld-freebsd6.2] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce 
AllenHome page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 family
Device Model:     ST3250824AS
Serial Number:    3ND
Firmware Version: 3.AAD
User Capacity:    250,059,350,016 bytes
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   7
ATA Standard is:  Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is:    Thu Feb  8 16:19:53 2007 EST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x82) Offline data collection activity
                                         was completed without error.
                                         Auto Offline Data Collection: 
Enabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine 
completed                                        without error or no 
self-test has ever
                                         been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                 ( 430) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                         Auto Offline data collection 
on/off support.
                                         Suspend Offline collection upon 
new
                                         command.
                                         Offline surface scan supported.
                                         Self-test supported.
                                         No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                         Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                         power-saving mode.
                                         Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                         General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        ( 100) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 10
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED 
WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
   1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x000f   119   099   006    Pre-fail  Always 
-       0
   3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0003   098   098   000    Pre-fail  Always 
-       0
   4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always 
-       25
   5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   100   100   036    Pre-fail  Always 
-       0
   7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x000f   071   060   030    Pre-fail  Always 
-       12913362
   9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   097   097   000    Old_age   Always 
-       3110
  10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0013   100   100   097    Pre-fail  Always 
-       0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   020    Old_age   Always 
-       40
187 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always 
-       0
189 Unknown_Attribute       0x003a   100   100   000    Old_age   Always 
-       0
190 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   065   055   045    Old_age   Always 
-       622329891
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   035   045   000    Old_age   Always 
-       35 (Lifetime Min/Max 0/23)
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x001a   057   051   000    Old_age   Always 
-       86235674
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0012   100   100   000    Old_age   Always 
-       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0010   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline 
-       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always 
-       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0000   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline 
-       0
202 TA_Increase_Count       0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always 
-       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num  Test_Description    Status                  Remaining 
LifeTime(hours)  LBA_of_first_error
# 1  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%         2 
-
# 2  Extended offline    Completed without error       00%         1 
-

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
  SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
     1        0        0  Not_testing
     2        0        0  Not_testing
     3        0        0  Not_testing
     4        0        0  Not_testing
     5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
   After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute 
delay.

Charles