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No RJ45 on card. But I've started archttp64 and connected to it from browser http://my-server-ip:81 successfully. Now it wants login/password to access the card configuration per se (at http://my-server-ip:82 ). One site mentions Official form Areca's FAQ "admin/0000" - don't work So I'm googling for Areca cards default login/password... and what to do if it was set by previous owner to not default... MASTER PASSWORD: MNO974315743924 - does not work either (it's probably for McBIOS anyway) Entered McBIOS - it's a fancy name for Areca card BIOS setup, during boot - there is an option "Change password". Entered empty password twice, which triggered question "Disable password?" answered "Yes"... and still can not reach http://my-server-ip:82 - it still asks for login/password and does not accept "admin/0000" I'll leave Areca firmware update for later.

"The current version of firmware does not support this function. Please update firmware using web-based manager." So... I need to start archttp64 first... and then how do I connect to it? Is it just port 81, like http://my-server-ip:81 ? Yes it is

Confirming: the Addonics AD4SA6GPX2 BIOS has no option to disable size truncation. In fact, the only option available in configuring RAID is to chose between 64k and 32k of stripe size

Next: "on-drive" Addonics AD2HDDHP6G HPM (Hardware Port Multiplier), JMicron chipset, $33 at Addonics. This is tiny 2-port card, mounted directly on SATA hard drive connector, so it does not occupy motherboard expansion slot. Card can do RAID-0, RAID-1, JBOD, and LARGE, mode is set by jumpers. In addition to brilliantly designed form factor, these little wonders can be daisy-chained. Testing was done aiming to 4+4TB=8TB parity. Created volume is seen by BIOS and unRAID under name JMicron_H_W_RAID0_blahblah for RAID0, and JMicron_H_W_JBOD_blahblah for both JBOD and LARGE (!). Test 1: 4+4TB RAID-0 via Addonics AD2HDDHP6G 2-port on-drive, 8TB Archive as data via mobo ===> unRAID says: Disk in parity slot is not biggest. unRAID reported parity User Capacity: 8,001,456,963,584 bytes [8.00 TB], data (8TB Archive) User Capacity: 8,001,563,222,016 bytes [8.00 TB]. Free-falling sync speed ~225-220 MB/s. So, in RAID-0 the card silently does size truncation and there is no way to disable it. Test 2: 4+4TB LARGE (spanned) via Addonics AD2HDDHP6G 2-port on-drive, 8TB Archive as data via mobo ===> unRAID says: Disk in parity slot is not biggest. unRAID reported parity User Capacity: 8,001,456,963,584 bytes [8.00 TB] so the card does size truncation in the LARGE mode, too. Not clear why, but it does it. Free-falling sync speed ~185-180 MB/s. Lower free-falling speed proves that it is in fact LARGE and not RAID-0. Note, that this card is very reluctant to change mode from RAID-0 to LARGE, it kinda gets stuck in previous config. You might need to set it to JBOD first, then to LARGE. Couple of extra reboots also might be needed. Test 3: 4+4TB JBOD (individual disks) via Addonics AD2HDDHP6G 2-port on-drive ===> unRAID sees only one 4TB disk. Probably my (rather old) motherboard SATA ports are not port multiplier compatible, Addonics manual says it's needed (the PM-compatibility, I mean). No speed tests were done. Test 4: 4TB+4TB+160GB LARGE via 2 x Addonics AD2HDDHP6G daisy chained, 8TB Archive as data via mobo ===> unRAID accepted the 8.16 TB parity! I'm not going to test the parity sync speed in this particular configuration, I'm happy enough that with daisy-chaining of these little cards I can mix and match practically any HDDs to achieve virtually any "single" drive size.

Call me cheap, but I consider $25/TB as good price. They all are aging faster then they die.

Haha! IT WORKED! Thank you very much - yes, that was the reason. I disabled "Capacity truncation" in Areca setup and it worked. So, the setup: 4x2TB=8TB parity in RAID-0 pool by Areca ARC-1110 in PCI-X 100/133 MHz slot. 8TB Archive as data drive in motherboard SATA port. unRAID accepted. unRAID reported parity-via-4x2TB-Areca: User Capacity: 8,001,594,327,040 bytes [8.00 TB] Data drive 8TB Archive: User Capacity: 8,001,563,222,016 bytes [8.00 TB] Created volume is seen by BIOS and unRAID under name SAreca_ARC-1110-VOL#000000001369145745 "Free falling" speed of writing (parity sync with single 160GB data drive, after the 160GB mark) by Areca into 4x2TB=8TB parity RAID-0 pool is about 250 MB/s. Not as impressive as 340, but good enough, I think. Looks like to pull out this trick one needs more sophisticated RAID card, like Areca, which provides user with ability to disable "size truncation". Primitive card, like Addonics AD4SA6GPX2, will not work - it will silently truncate size, RAID pool will become smaller than the 8TB Archive data drive, and unRAID will not accept it. Can't check the 4+4TB configuration right now, because Areca card still needs firmware update (from current 1.39 to 1.49) to understand drives > 2.2TB. Summation (2015-03-23) of what I know about Areca firmware update: there are 3 ways: DOS utility nflash, CLI (command line interface) utility, and web-based manager called McRAID. CLI and nflash both can not work with firmware below 1.43, so my only option is McRAID. Download archttp64 (Areca http proxy server), and run it on unRAID server, then you can access it at http://my-server-ip:81. Cards config is at http://my-server-ip:82 and in my card this is closed by login/password, Arecas default admin/0000 don't work. Contacting tech support. To leave it on a happy note all other tests will have to wait till tomorrow, so I configured 4x2TB=8TB parity, single 8TB Archive as data, launched parity sync and went to watch movies

The BIOS setup for this card is rather minimalistic - not to say primitive - and I'm pretty sure there was nothing like that. "Safe" is supposedly one of the RAID "modes", in the same menu with RAID-0, RAID-1, grayed out too, BTW. Will double check though.

Assuming you're running v6 you can simply get the size info from the main GUI by clicking on the drive -- that will show the detailed SMART info, including the exact byte count. Great, thanks! Here what I've got for the 8TB Archive installed as data drive: Disk 1 attached to port: sdd Device Model: ST8000AS0002-1NA17Z Serial Number: Z840120L LU WWN Device Id: 5 000c50 079f747c3 Firmware Version: AR13 User Capacity: 8,001,563,222,016 bytes [8.00 TB] Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical Rotation Rate: 5980 rpm Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall] ATA Version is: ACS-2, ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 3b SATA Version is: SATA 3.1, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s) Local Time is: Fri Mar 20 08:25:30 2015 PDT SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled SMART overall-health : PASSED

This Toshiba is made by Hitachi. Says it right on the label. My bet is that all latest Toshibas are.

Do you have a complete set of backups? Old, smaller drives work well for backups. I keep a complete set of backups on 1-3TB drives stored in these: http://www.amazon.com/DriveBox-3851-0000-11-Hard-Disk-Case/dp/B004UALLPE Almost complete, like 99% is on optical discs of various kind. And I'm having a heart attack with one thought of ripping it all again

Don't know yet, my Areca ARC-1110 turned out to have firmware 1.39, and DOS-mode flash utility needs at least 1.43 to flash to 1.49, so I learned and learned, now my bet is on CLI, but I'd like to wait until parity sync completes, in about 2.5 hours, wanna see the resulting numbers.

I did not install unMenu on this server, can I do it some other way? I have keyboard/monitor attached, so can login.

BTW, they already arrived (fantastic fast shipping!) so they will be soon for torture. Unfortunately I don't have any 5TB and don't want to buy one... but I was going to try anyway if those on-drive could be daisy-chained. So far it looks like quite a viable option. I still, however, like the idea of reusing my 2TB drives in pooled parity. There are 4 of them, and will be many more... I can't just throw them away, gotta find some use even if only for playing...

I was half-expecting something like that... but was still hoping. Well, no luck with straightforward, but I could always use 3x3TB=9TB for parity with 8TB Archives for data. I'm currently thinking how can I root up three 3TB drives from my "production" servers... I mean, I can easily do this if I install the two 4TB instead, but that means I wouldn't be able to play with them in the Testt server... need to think more.

Great idea, thanks! I'll definitely try that for testing, although I'm kinda reluctant to do thing like that on a production server - I somehow don't like setup in which I wouldn't be able just to throw in replacement drive and would have to castrate it a little create an HPA on it first...

So, the second preclear cycle for 8TB Seagate Archive drives completed successfully (preclear the 8TB Archives via USB 3.0 card speed example), and, not having patience for the third one, I started playing. The idea was to use 4TB+4TB, or 4x2TB RAID-0 pool for parity and 8TB Archive drives for data. Well that does not work so far. Edited: yes it works! See further in the thread. Test setup: Supermicro H8DME-2 with some low-end Opteron and 4GB RAM, unRAID Trial 6.0-beta14b. Available drives are: 3x8TB Seagate Archives, 2x4TB Seagates, 4x2TB HGSTs/Samsungs... and one 2.5" Hitachi of size 160GB Available RAID cards are: PCI-X: 3Ware AMCC 9550SX-12SI 12 Port SATA PCI-X RAID (teeested - toooooo sloooow?) Areca ARC-1110 4 Port 64Bit 133MHz PCI-X SATA II RAID fw 1.39 Works 4x2TB=8TB parity, with capacity truncation disabled Areca ARC-1110 4 Port 64Bit 133MHz PCI-X SATA II RAID firmware updated to 1.49 Works 4+4TB=8TB parity, with capacity truncation disabled Adaptec Dell 6-Port SATA RAID AAR-2610SA 0H2052 (not tested yet, how to select drives?) LSI SAS3041X-R 4-Port PCI-X-133 SAS/SATA 3Gb/s RAID (not tested yet, how to enter setup?) PCIe x2: Addonics AD4SA6GPX2 4-port PCIe x2 Test post (no spanning (!), RAID only) Areca ARC-1210 4 Port PCI-e x8 SATA II RAID fw 1.49 Works 4+4TB=8TB parity, with capacity truncation disabled On-drive: 3 x Addonics AD2HDDHP6G Drive mount 2-Port 6G HPM Addonics AD2HDDHP6G tests post On-bracket: SYBA SY-PCI40037 1:5 SATA II Dip Switch RAID Tests post, results similar to Addonics "on-drive" PCI: Sunweit XWT52 PCI SATA 150 RAID card 4 ports (in the mail from China, 3 weeks?) Preliminary (2015-03-24) conclusions: User Capacity of 8TB Archive disk is 8,001,563,222,016 bytes. For parity we need to create same or bigger RAID-0 volume. For 4TB+4TB or 4x2TB, the only way to achieve it is by using an Areca card - it's the only card (so far, out of tested) which allows to disable "capacity truncation". Other cards will silently truncate size (round down to nearest 1GB or 10GB, here is why), RAID pool will become smaller than the 8TB Archive data drive, and unRAID will not accept it. I don't have immediate need for this hardware, so I will continue playing. If some of you would like me to do some specific tests - I will do my best.

If I got it correctly, USB 3.0 support was not there in unRAID before 6.x. What unRAID version your are running?

Out of stock...

The card communicates with the system via single "host-side" SATA port, nothing else, so I bet my hat there is absolutely no need for any driver, any OS dependencies, etc., whatsoever. Sure.

No I was not looking for port multipliers, I have enough SATA ports and not enough RAID-0s, so I was looking for at least 4-port hardware RAID-0 for 4x2TB=8TB parity setup. Those tests are closing, tomorrow the preclear will, hopefully, complete and I will start torturing But the Addonics idea of mounting it directly on the drive is absolutely brilliant. I've already ordered three of those puppies so we will see, if they really can daisy-chain... possibilities to fool unRAID would be endless!

I wonder if daisy-chaining would work...

Heh... Just today I found and bought similar but 5-ports bracket-mount RAID card SYBA SY-PCI40037 http://www.sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1099 Doesn't take up any of the motherboard slots

Ouch!... Those are even cheaper than I've got my externals... :'(

NORCO SS-500 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133030 5 in 3, hot swap, fan, overheat alarm... $65 + ship

As it was expected, the deal is off.