Sans Digital TowerRaid TR5M+B with RocketRaid 622 not being detected with Unraid

[Anthony D.]

I have been using Unraid 5.13b for some time without issue.  I have 4 2TB drives and a 120gig Cache drive.  All were connected via the onboard SATA on my Intel Motherboard and working properly.  I purchased the Towerraid to allow the addition of the 5th drive and at the same time provide cooling for the drives.  My system now only detects the 120 gig cache drive (directly connected to the onboard sata) and NONE of the drives in the array.

 

I would think that Unraid would automatically detect the RocketRaid 622 card and then add the hard disks but it does not.  Is there a way to manually load the driver for the card?

 

As a note, when the pc boots, the card's BIOS detects the 5 drives and shows them all in legacy mode.  The system proceeds to boot from the USB Flash and then goes through the process but never detects the rocketraid or the drives.

 

Please give assistance as I am now stuck with all of my data not available to me anymore and it is FUSTRATING!!

 

Thank you!!!

 

Anthony

 

syslog.txt

[chuck23322]

I had something similar -- check the website for the card and see if they have a "JBOD" firmware instead of a RAID one.

 

If I'm right - with a RAID firmware, Unraid may be thinking "there ought to be one giant drive out there, and I don't see it"

 

You actually don't want the card doing RAID -- you want it doing JBOD (presenting individual drives) and letting UnRaid deal with combining them.

 

BE CAREFUL here -- you do not, no matter what, DO NOT actually try to configure any type of "raid" inside the utilities, bios, etc for that card.

 

...Chuck

[rcrh]

I have this same chassis and controller card and am having the same issue.  I've reviewed the documents that came with the card and they suggest that there is no BIOS flash.  Changing to JBOD mode requires OS drives.

 

Did you resolve this issue?  If so, how?

 

Thanks in advance.

Richard

[chuck23322]

I have this same chassis and controller card and am having the same issue.  I've reviewed the documents that came with the card and they suggest that there is no BIOS flash.  Changing to JBOD mode requires OS drives.

 

Did you resolve this issue?  If so, how?

 

Thanks in advance.

Richard

 

Explain what you mean about "Changing to JBOD mode requires OS drives."

 

 

[rcrh]

I mean the disc that came with the card has no bios files on it and instead has a set of "nonraid" drivers for various OS's.  And, when I look around on the manufacturer's website the only alternative bios they have is for an identified boot problem with certain processors.  It doesn't change the card into JBOD.  So, my conclusion is that it requires drivers at the OS level to make this card work as JBOD. 

 

So, I was hoping other people with this card have found a solution.

 

To that end I came across this thread

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19882.msg176751#msg176751

 

that seems to do just that.  There's also another thread about patching the kernel but I'm a little bit afraid of that one.

 

Make sense?

 

[chuck23322]

I mean the disc that came with the card has no bios files on it and instead has a set of "nonraid" drivers for various OS's.  And, when I look around on the manufacturer's website the only alternative bios they have is for an identified boot problem with certain processors.  It doesn't change the card into JBOD.  So, my conclusion is that it requires drivers at the OS level to make this card work as JBOD. 

 

So, I was hoping other people with this card have found a solution.

 

To that end I came across this thread

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19882.msg176751#msg176751

 

that seems to do just that.  There's also another thread about patching the kernel but I'm a little bit afraid of that one.

 

Make sense?

 

Thanks for clarifying.  Yes, typically, you boot into DOS or Windows to make a BIOS change.  Many vendors only provide a BIOS file and a DOS executable and leave it up to yourself to create a DOS (typically FREEDOS) boot image/disk and go from there.

 

Re the thread you linked to -- my understanding is that it's not required with the latest 5.x of UnRaid.

 

Here's a SansDigital link about changing to a JBOD bios -- it notes that the RocketRaid ships with a RAID bios -- which you DO not want.

 

http://dl.sansdigital.com/images/downloads/TR8M-BP_TR8MP/Non_RAID_Driver_Installation.pdf

 

I'm 99% sure that when you update the BIOS to a non-raid version (aka, JBOD) -- UnRaid will see it and the drives just fine.

 

You shouldn't need to worry about modifying the kernel, or installing any other drivers, etc.

 

To be clear (am not trying to be pejorative) -- BIOS is "stored on the card" and is used by ANY OS.  "Drivers" are loaded into the various OSs.

 

The confusion may be that you need to boot into "DOS" -- to install the new BIOS...  once it's on the Card, then you boot UnRaid -- and it should see the JBOD bios and be fine.  -- You will need to create a "freedos" boot image, or CD or USB key with the JBOD BIOS and it's install utility.

 

{Alternatively, you could temporarily put the card in a Windows machine -- update the BIOS, and then return the card to the UnRaid machine}

[dgaschk]

There may be drivers in the latest RC. Rocket 620 is supported.

[chuck23322]

There may be drivers in the latest RC. Rocket 620 is supported.

 

I'm 99% sure the Rocket is supported -- just not in RAID mode.  He has to change the BIOS on the card to JBOD mode.

[rcrh]

 

I'm 99% sure the Rocket is supported -- just not in RAID mode.  He has to change the BIOS on the card to JBOD mode.

 

To reiterate:  I have to use the script above to get the rocketraid to work in jbod mode with RC5. Further the CD that came with the card does not contain an information about flashing the bios.  Finally, there is nothing on the High Point website about flashing the bios. And ++finally I can find nothing on the google about flashing the bios. 

 

The upshot of all of this is that I have the card working (with the script above) but I was hoping that maybe someone had found and used a bios flash.

 

Anyone?

Thanks,

Richard

[UhClem]

Note that HighPoint's Rocket 62[02] and RocketRaid 62[02] are different cards, with different firmwares. And, the Rocket 620A-WD has its own distinctions. (I don't know the details, but I know there are differences.)

 

[michaelsu76]

I've had similar issues and then some...

 

I bought the TR8M from Sans Digital that came with the RR622 card.  It's like the TR5M except with 8 bays.

 

I have an MSI motherboard with a 6 x SATA controller.  I have two Sil3132 cards in two PCIe x1 slots with two drives each.  Total of 10 drives so far.  7 x 2TB (1 for parity), 1 x 1TB, 1 x 100GB (for cache).  UnRAID 4.7.  It's been silky smooth... streaming everything up to full blu-ray rips.

 

Got this TR8M because I ran out of case space. 

 

So I plug the RR622 card into my remaining expansion slot, a PCIe x16.  System doesn't even post.  I ended up getting in touch with Sans Digital and they gave me a new BIOS and I could get my server to boot.  But I still couldn't get my server to recognize drives in the enclosure until I put the above script into my go file.

 

Now that I can actually work with the drives in the enclosure, I start with a pre-clear.  But to my amazement, it's SLOW as molasses.  I was in pre-read and I was only getting 13MB/s.  Granted they're 2TB drives (WD20EURS) but all my other 2TB drives would pre-read at 70-90MB/s.  At that pace it wouldve taken a week to preclear the drives.  Normally takes a day and a half.

 

Is it supposed to be this slow?  I can't think of why it would be this slow.

 

To the best of my ability it seems to me that the syslog is in order.  ata11.x & ata12.x correspond to the RR622 controller and seems they posted fine in the log.  And I'm not getting any obvious redflags on the EURS drives.  I'll post my syslog with the hopes that the kind community will have some insight.  Otherwise, I'm going to bail and return this enclosure.  Maybe I was better off with an SAS controller?

 

BTW, I yanked the drive near the end of the syslog.  Hence the errors.

 

Thanks for any insight/advice.

syslog-2012-10-15.txt

[liunam]

Same issue here.  I have the TR4M+B model and I did the JBOD BIOS flash (disabled INT13 and the reallocate EBDA options during the BIOS flash) and added the enable_achi script). 

 

I am pre-clearing two drives now and they are reading at 5MB/s each!  I also tried to copy a file out of the cache drive that I moved there and it was going at a rate of under 7MB/s on a gigabit network. 

 

I have this connected to an HP Proliant N40 box.  Can this card/setup really be this bad or I am missing something that I need to install?  I have attached the syslog if anyone would like to take a look to see if there is something that is not right. 

 

I have searched the Sans Digital forums also but do not see anything that I might have missed. 

syslog.zip

[dgaschk]

I've had success with a Rocket622A. Adding more than 2 drives per eSATA port will kill performance. Especially of parity builds, checks, disk rebuilds and failed disk emulation. Any procedure that accesses more that 2 drives over the 3Gbps eSATA link will be unusable.

 

I tested with a RR and I think that the RAID needs to be configured with multiple RAID sets so that each RAID set contains only a single drive. The rocket card was cheaper and does not need any configuration.

 

Drivers for the Rocket622A are included in unRAID version 5.