From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: PFC Subject: Re: multiple Sata SATAII 150, TX4 - how to tell which drive is which? headaches galore! Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 13:20:59 +0100 Message-ID: References: <200601230336.55220.mlaks@verizon.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <200601230336.55220.mlaks@verizon.net> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Mitchell Laks , linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 09:36:54 +0100, Mitchell Laks wrote: > Dear Experts, > > I wanted to ask for any experience with running raid with SATA drives and > controllers here under linux. > Well, here's mine : Maxtor SATA drives series 6V (those with 16 MB cache) are incompatible with nforce 3-4 SATA controllers. Maxtor acknowledges this. Symptom is a slow death of the drive, ending with command timeouts. When reverting the drive to SATA 1.5Gbps with the jumper, it works perfectly again (for a few days...). nvidia doesn't care. This is on windows and linux. In windows, you have to use fucking PIO mode or you get corruptions. nforce4 sata also has problems with plextor sata burners, and possibly others. The Maxtor 6L series (with 8 MB cache) work flawlessly. I currently have these SATA drives, on a nforce3 MSI mobo : # hdparm -I /dev/sd? |grep "Model Numb" Model Number: Maxtor 6L200M0 Model Number: Maxtor 6L250S0 Model Number: ST3250823AS Model Number: ST3250823AS All work. I RMA'd the 6V250 drive and exchanged it against a good, old, IDE drive, which works perfect. It took me a month, 3 maxtor drives, and nights of googling to figure this out... My gut feeling is that SATA isn't that ready for prime-time after all...