Re: 3ware 9550SX problems - mke2fs incredibly slow writing last third of inode tables

["Jeff V. Merkey" <jmerkey@utah-nac.org>]

I see this problem if you have the array configured for RAID 5 and you 
have not pushed the F8 key during array config after setting up
the array. Try rebooting, setting the Raid 5 for INIT (Press F8) and it 
goes away, but the whole array will reinit itself. There seems to be
some sort of problem in their RAID 5 logic and you can setup a RAID 5 
stripe set, but init doesn't finish or gets in a wierd state during
reboot. It seems confined to 9500 series controllers, but I have also 
seen this behavior on the 8000 series drivers as well. I don't know
if you are using RAID 5 , but I have seen this problem on RAID 5 configs 
only.

Jeff

Alex Bligh - linux-kernel wrote:

>
>
> --On 01 November 2005 18:13 +0100 Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> 
> wrote:
>
>>>> In my experience, the 3ware SATA controllers which are not NCQ-capable
>>>> have very, very lousy write performance with some drives, unless you
>>>> enable the write cache (which is, of course, a bit dangerous without
>>>> UPS or battery backup on the controller).
>>>
>>
>>> Not to sound like the a 3ware chearleader, but this card does support
>>> NCQ.
>>
>>
>> Oh. I didn't know whether this particukar controller supported NCQ or
>> not.
>
>
> It even supports SATA-3, not much good that it does me.
>
> I managed to format it reiserfs in the end. dbench (yes I know it isn't a
> great benchmark) gives me a write speed of 7Mb/s compared to 700Mb/s 
> if one
> of the disks in the array is attached to the motherboard SATA controller.
>
> 7Mb/s is quite stunningly appalling. I realise the release notes warn of
> slow writes, but that's just daft! I have a few bits in my setup to check
> before I start pointing the finger comprehensively. It may (for instance)
> be a large partition problem (suggested on the ext2 list).
>
> I'm taking it that it works at least for some people (did you test write
> speed Lawrence?).
>
> -- 
> Alex Bligh
> -
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