Recommended controllers for Unraid

[jaj08]

11 minutes ago, Hoopster said:

Avoid anything with a port multiplier (the JMB575 chip on that card).   A port multiplier just divides available bandwidth between more ports and performance will suffer when all attached drives are in use, as you discovered.

 

As mentioned in the first post of this discussion there are the 9201-16i, 9305-16i, etc. LSI 16-port cards.  They will not be cheap but perhaps you can find a good used one somewhere.

 

 

Grrrr not shocked that their was a clear cause to my issues, I have been trying to do this as cheap as possible being Christmas time and this upgrade wasn't really planned, I just got lucky with a new work laptop replacing my personal desktop giving me the ability to upgrade my 2014 server grade build I had been using.

[luzankia]

So, I ordered myself a generic 1166, great.
But after swapping my old HBA for the new card and every drives where at the right place, things started to go wrong.
One drive disconnected itself and each time I reintegrated it in the array, after a couple of minutes of rebuilding, it would go down again.
So, if someone has an up-to-date firmware for it, I would gladly download it.
I already tryed the silverstone one but ended with a not responding process.

Envoyé de mon S88Plus en utilisant Tapatalk

[trurl]

3 hours ago, luzankia said:

up-to-date firmware

What makes you think that would fix the problem?

 

Attach diagnostics to your NEXT post in this thread.

 

I may split these into a separate thread.

[luzankia]

On 12/20/2022 at 3:15 PM, trurl said:

What makes you think that would fix the problem?

Because when I rolled back to my LSI, everything worked back after the rebuild on the same drive.

 

With the impossibility to send the 1166 back, lost for lost, I flashed the Silverstone ECS06 firmware on it but from a third computer and everything worked. (firmware ugraded from rev 2011 to 2111)

 

I launched a parity check to load the controller and it's running at an estimated speed of 120 Mb/s when it was between 30Mb/s and 360Kb/s before the firmware upgrade.

 

It's definitly slower then the LSI but in idle, I'm now at 25 Watts instead of 32 Watts.

 

EDIT : forgot to stop my dockers, I'm at >200Mb/s estimated speed in parity check.

EDIT 2 : Parity check finished and no probleme so far, power use between 23.3 and 24.5w in idle.

Edited December 26, 2022 by luzankia
added the EDIT part

[vvolfpack]

Just wanted to thank this thread for all the great discussion that helped me with my decision.

 

I initially went with these ASM1166 cards (1, 2) , but both didn't get detected by my Windows machines ( 1 intel-based and 1 amd-based) for a firmware update. Returned them for a refund.

 

I then followed other recommendations on the thread to order cards from more reliable sources like SYBA even though they're a bit more expensive. Here's the actual JMicron JMB582 card I ordered. Decided to go with a 2-port card instead for lower power consumption compared to 4/6 ports. Can confirm that it added only 3 watts on idle. One word of caution though that upon installing the expansion on my Z390 UD mobo, it automatically turned off my SATA controllers upon reboot. A simple fix via BIOS did it and now everything is working smoothly.

 

[PhilBarker]

On 12/26/2022 at 3:10 PM, luzankia said:

Because when I rolled back to my LSI, everything worked back after the rebuild on the same drive.

 

With the impossibility to send the 1166 back, lost for lost, I flashed the Silverstone ECS06 firmware on it but from a third computer and everything worked. (firmware ugraded from rev 2011 to 2111)

 

I launched a parity check to load the controller and it's running at an estimated speed of 120 Mb/s when it was between 30Mb/s and 360Kb/s before the firmware upgrade.

 

It's definitly slower then the LSI but in idle, I'm now at 25 Watts instead of 32 Watts.

 

EDIT : forgot to stop my dockers, I'm at >200Mb/s estimated speed in parity check.

EDIT 2 : Parity check finished and no probleme so far, power use between 23.3 and 24.5w in idle.

 

I definitely need to do this - my parity check on my ASM1166 sits at 30ish MB/s which I always thought was a bit slow and my server is eating power usage.

I tried to find the files on the Silverstone site but all I found is a zip file with an update tool and a 11080000.ROM from 11/01/2022
Where did you find the 2011/2111 versions?

[luzankia]

When you launch the update utility, it will scan for compatibles peripherals and display the firmware version of the card it found.

I had to use two different computer to do the firmware upgrade, on the first one, the app would freeze after clicking the upgrade button every time I tried. On the second one, it took a couple of seconds to finish it.

Again, I took the risk to upgrade it because I couldn't send it back. The app look generic but you never know if it's not customised a little by silverstone as the spi field talk about unknown spi for the card.
In one line, it worked for me but nothing say it will work for without breaking everything.

Envoyé de mon S88Plus en utilisant Tapatalk

[PhilBarker]

Thanks, yeah got it sorted now.

The silverstone firmware update is confusing as hell - the file names for the firmware don't match the actual version.  Takes a lot of googling to work out which is newest etc....

 

I found the file on https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS06/ - for anyone else wanting to try this it's helpfully called "Fix compatibility issue and support Intel 600 series chipset motherboard" 

 

I shutdown unraid, moved my card to my Windows 11 gaming PC, ran the firmware update and it worked fine

My card had come with 200529-000D-02 firmware version, flashed it to 211108-0000-00. 

I *think* mine was about 2 years old - it's hard to tell as I found an archive of loads of version numbers but there's no consistency in the version numbering at all.

 

Either way seems to work fine, did the upgrade last night and all my disks are still there this morning.
I'm going to write up a guide on my documentation site just in case anyone else is googling it like I was as there's not a lot of help out there  

EDIT: Oh I did also, same as you, see an increase in speed too when running a parity check!

Edited January 1 by PhilBarker

[luzankia]

Good to hear.

Envoyé de mon S88Plus en utilisant Tapatalk

[darkside40]

Just a quick warning.

Because i wanted a new faster controller card to replace my AAR-1430SA i grabbed a rather cheap (30€) Sata controller card with ASM-1166 chipset from Amazon. Okay they shipped a different model than it was advertised on the photos but okay, nearly all of the ASM1166 are unlabled etc. You can only differ them by the board Layout etc.

What i got was that here:

 

Using it resulted in kicked out drives etc. For gods sake with much help here in the Forum the situation was manageable.

I dont know if the card is faulty or if the model is crap, but at least i could return it to Amazon.

 

What i ordered now was a bit more expensive model, hopefully it works better:

https://smile.amazon.de/dp/B09K4WKHKK?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

[JorgeB]

That can always be an issue with these cheap Asmedia and JMB controllers, the chips themselves are OK, but the build quality of that specif controller can just be bad, I once got a couple of Asmedia 1062 2-port controllers that would not go 5 minutes without UDMA CRC errors, just bad controllers, replaced them with equivalent Syba controllers and no more issues.

[PhilBarker]

The firmware is a lottery too

I bought a card end of last year. The firmware was 4 years old. ASM1166

 

Since upgrading the firmware the speed has improved massively and it’s working fine with power management too 

[darkside40]

I think getting a Firmware upgrade for an unlabled card is nearly impossible.

I mean if you want es good ASM1166 i think i would be a good Idea to buy a Silverstone ECS06, at least than you now the manufacturer.

[PhilBarker]

50 minutes ago, darkside40 said:

I think getting a Firmware upgrade for an unlabled card is nearly impossible.

I mean if you want es good ASM1166 i think i would be a good Idea to buy a Silverstone ECS06, at least than you now the manufacturer.

 

Cheap copy here, upgraded firmware with the Silverstone firmware, zero issues

[luzankia]

I will add that I did it too and that the silverstone flasher is, in fact an asmedia software.

Before upgrading I did too had kicked out drives ans since then, no problem.

[darkside40]

Is there any guide how to check the firmware or where to get the updated?

 

Edit:

Okay to answer myself, simply grab the updater from the ECS06 Support Page. After Setting up a Windows PC and installing the Driver for the ASM1166 i was able to flash the FW

Edited January 8 by darkside40

[PhilBarker]

Yeah it's easy to do just takes some piecing together of info scattered around

 

I've added a quick guide to my docs site just really for future reference
https://docs.phil-barker.com/posts/upgrading-ASM1166-firmware-for-unraid/

[darkside40]

Thanks for that. I think i will make a similiar german Post on my Blog for future Reference. Would it be okay to use your pictures?

Btw i wrote a mail to Asmedia if it was possible to get Firmware Roms directly from them but they refused.

 

So its best to keep an Eye on Silverstone.

[PhilBarker]

Yes of course

[darkside40]

Thanks

[darkside40]

Okay the second ASM1166 Card also goes back to Amazon. Same as with the first Cheap one. One Disk gets kicked out of the Array. changed the cables etc. nothing changed. Also tried the second x16 PCIe slot on the board. Mounted the old Adaptec i have no problems. Firmware was the newest on the card.

 

I dont know, seems that the ASM1166 does not like to play with my Gigabyte B460M D3H. Anyone tried that Board or Chipset before?

Now i have to rebuild that disk again. Argh.

[PhilBarker]

23 hours ago, darkside40 said:

Okay the second ASM1166 Card also goes back to Amazon. Same as with the first Cheap one. One Disk gets kicked out of the Array. changed the cables etc. nothing changed. Also tried the second x16 PCIe slot on the board. Mounted the old Adaptec i have no problems. Firmware was the newest on the card.

 

I dont know, seems that the ASM1166 does not like to play with my Gigabyte B460M D3H. Anyone tried that Board or Chipset before?

Now i have to rebuild that disk again. Argh.

 

That's so weird

I don't have that board I have a Gigabyte A320

But I ordered a card from Amazon and it had the Marvell 88SE9215 chip. It seemed to work but I hadn't read this thread to see the warning.

Randomly it just seemed to power down and all disks connected to it vanished. They didn't get corrupted or anything they just disappeared and I had to reboot.

I sent it back and got the ASM1166 6 port version (it's an MZHOU card I have) and it has been bulletproof ever since.
Only issue I had was enabling power saving features but as said earlier after I upgraded the firmware it's worked perfectly with that too

[darkside40]

I know that the Marvell Controllers have a bad reputation but the stone aged Adaptec AAR-1430SA i am using since more than 7 years is really bullet proof, even when using S3 Sleep etc.

 

So yeah its kind of a gamble. Maybe there would be a magical UEFi setting that would make the ASM1166 work, but if have no time to try.

 

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, darkside40 said:

I know that the Marvell Controllers have a bad reputation but the stone aged Adaptec AAR-1430SA

It's mostly the newer ones, that Adaptec works very well, I have some myself, it's not on the list of recommended because it's a quite old  PCIe 1.0 controller.

[Roque]

On 1/8/2023 at 5:43 PM, darkside40 said:

Is there any guide how to check the firmware or where to get the updated?

 

Edit:

Okay to answer myself, simply grab the updater from the ECS06 Support Page. After Setting up a Windows PC and installing the Driver for the ASM1166 i was able to flash the FW

What about the C-States on the Silverstone PCI card? I bought a cheap 4-port card on eBay the other day. Unfortunately, I can only achieve C3 with it.

 

 

Edited January 16 by Roque