I'm hoping to use my RocketRaid 1820A controller as an 8x SATA controller for unRAID. Anyone know if this is possible? I'm just trying to avoid having to buy a new SATA controller card.

I just attached a drive to one I had in the old parts bin and it appears to work but there is a problem.

 

Feb 28 03:02:14 unraid kernel: sata_mv: Highpoint RocketRAID BIOS CORRUPTS DATA on all attached drives, regardless of if/how they are configured. BEWARE!

Feb 28 03:02:14 unraid kernel: sata_mv: For data safety, do not use sectors 8-9 on "Legacy" drives, and avoid the final two gigabytes on all RocketRAID BIOS initialized drives.

 

I haven't fully researched this but I'm in the middle of trying to get an error to show up with a Rocketraid 2300 that i'd like to use in a mini-itx pci-e 1x build. I have the parity disk on the motherboard controller so if any bit is incorrect on the Rocketraid attached drives, it should record an error and then fix it.

Feb 28 03:02:14 unraid kernel: sata_mv: Highpoint RocketRAID BIOS CORRUPTS DATA on all attached drives, regardless of if/how they are configured. BEWARE!

Feb 28 03:02:14 unraid kernel: sata_mv: For data safety, do not use sectors 8-9 on "Legacy" drives, and avoid the final two gigabytes on all RocketRAID BIOS initialized drives.

 

Seems like this can't be good? Maybe I should just suck it up and find a new controller.

 

Let me know what happens.

I wasn't able to get Unraid to show an error in the one test I had time to do. I kept the parity drive on the motherboard and put two drives on the Rocketraid 2300. I build the parity, formatted the drives, and filled them up 100% in one session. Then I rebooted and ran a parity check without errors.

 

After that I had to use the drives to hold the data from my latest failed drive.

 

I've been meaning to sell my 1820a and buy the Marvell 8 port pci-x card. That card is 100% supported by everything, but now it's tempting to wait for the upcoming PCI-E 4x version.