SSD Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Pretty sure these should work for 12 JBOD disks or as a RAID0 for parity and pass through of other 10 slots. I have an ARC-1200 x1 2 port card that works well, and know users have been successful with ARC-1222. Not 100% sure this one is compatible but my guess is it is. If not, I'm sure Tom will add the driver. Couldn't resist at the price point! http://www.ebay.com/itm/Areca-12-Port-SATA-II-3Gb-s-PCIe-x8-RAID-Controller-Card-ARC-1231ML-/371263367362?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item56710568c2 Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Amazing price for an Areca. If I had ANY use for this I'd hit "Buy It Now" in a heartbeat. ... I'm thinking seriously about buying it anyway Quote Link to comment
tr0910 Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Same seller also has the older 12 port 1230 for $69, and the 24 port 1280 for $99. How are they different other than not using 4 port breakout cables? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Areca-24-Port-SATA-II-3Gb-s-PCIe-x8-RAID-Controller-Card-ARC-1280/291387313328?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D29310%26meid%3D48cf2450d23145babedcb417855f5712%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D371263367362&rt=nc Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Do they support large disks greaterthan 2.2tb? Quote Link to comment
StevenD Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Do they support large disks greaterthan 2.2tb? Yes. I used to use a pair of 4TB drives on a 1220. Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Damn, this is an exceptional deal then. Im almost tempted to buy em even if I dont need it! Quote Link to comment
tr0910 Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 There are non - ML versions that don't use the breakout cables. Are they the same controller? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Areca-24-Port-SATA-II-3Gb-s-PCIe-x8-RAID-Controller-Card-ARC-1280-/291387313328?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43d8098cb0 I'm tempted to get a 1280 to put into a TAMS server case to replace the 3 PCI-X cards now in there. A new motherboard with only one x8 slot required.... But I would have a bit of cable snarl with 24 sata cables coming off one controller card.... Quote Link to comment
StevenD Posted February 21, 2015 Share Posted February 21, 2015 Damn, this is an exceptional deal then. Im almost tempted to buy em even if I dont need it! I would have already bought it, but i decided that i will no longer buy hardware that i dont immediately need. Ive got way too much stuff laying around. Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 I would have already bought it, but i decided that i will no longer buy hardware that i dont immediately need. Ive got way too much stuff laying around. Ditto !!! (In spades !!) ... this one's still very tempting, however Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 22, 2015 Author Share Posted February 22, 2015 Same seller also has the older 12 port 1230 for $69, and the 24 port 1280 for $99. How are they different other than not using 4 port breakout cables? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Areca-24-Port-SATA-II-3Gb-s-PCIe-x8-RAID-Controller-Card-ARC-1280/291387313328?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D29310%26meid%3D48cf2450d23145babedcb417855f5712%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D371263367362&rt=nc I don't think they are different. Just that the SATA connectors are more cumbersome - but potentially cheaper if you have a stockpile of SATA cables when they were free. Cache modules are different, and possibly higher on the ML versions. I am not sure if the cache is used on JBOD disks or not. Anyone know? That 24 drive beast would be more than I could stomach cabling up. Heck of a deal though if you were anal enough to get it all flawlessly connected. I was kind of partial to the 16 port ARC-1261ML, but disappointed I couldn't find one incrementally more expensive than the 1231ML. Quote Link to comment
pkn Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 Incredible deals! But... I would have already bought it, but i decided that i will no longer buy hardware that i dont immediately need. Ive got way too much stuff laying around. ...same here... Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 I got around to testing this today. I was using an old machine that I use mostly for preclearing. It runs 5.0.5 (32 bit). My 6TB looked like 1.6T drives. Was able to plug the controller into Ethernet port and upgrade the firmware. Very easy process. After the firmware updated the drives correctly reported as 6TB. I set the controller to JBOD mode, and told it not the truncate the capacity (by default it truncates to the nearest 10G). Maybe drives are always in even 10G capacity, I don't know. Booted unRAID. Drives are seen. Names a little odd but ok. Bringing up a smart report created a surprise. The drive attributes didn't show up. Mix of accurate and inaccurate information. smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.9.11p-unRAID] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Vendor: HGST Product: HDN726060ALE610 Revision: R001 User Capacity: 6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB] Logical block size: 512 bytes Rotation Rate: 10000 rpm Logical Unit id: 0x0004d92791e8d860 Serial number: NAG41xxx Device type: disk Transport protocol: Fibre channel (FCP-2) Local Time is: Fri Feb 27 14:08:57 2015 PST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled Temperature Warning: Disabled or Not Supported === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 30 C Drive Trip Temperature: 25 C Manufactured in week 30 of year 2002 Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 4278190080 Accumulated start-stop cycles: 256 Elements in grown defect list: 0 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 Non-medium error count: 0 Device does not support Self Test logging Tried lots of options but that's the best I got. Dug and dug and found that there was a change made in the 1.51 Areca firmware to make controllers work with smartctl. But the latest version for this controller and other bargain cards (which are termed "legacy" on their website meaning, I suppose, not being updated further) is 1.49. So more digging and I found an Areca utility called CLI. The CLI program will output the drive attributes. (Except the temperature). It may be that the real temperature is embedded in the raw bits somehow and could be culled out. root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# /boot/cli32 disk smart drv=10 S.M.A.R.T Information For Drive[#10] # Attribute Items Flag Value Worst Thres Raw State =============================================================================== 1 Raw Read Error Rate 0x0b 100 100 16 0 OK 2 Throughput Performance 0x05 138 138 54 100 OK 3 Spin Up Time 0x07 100 100 24 0 OK 4 Start/Stop Count 0x12 100 100 0 3 OK 5 Reallocated Sector Count 0x33 100 100 5 0 OK 7 Seek Error Rate 0x0b 100 100 67 0 OK 8 Seek Time Performance 0x05 128 128 20 18 OK 9 Power-on Hours Count 0x12 100 100 0 76 OK 10 Spin Retry Count 0x13 100 100 60 0 OK 12 Device Power Cycle Count 0x32 100 100 0 3 OK 192 Power-off Retract Count 0x32 100 100 0 5 OK 193 Load Cycle Count 0x12 100 100 0 5 OK 194 Temperature 0x02 214 214 0 917532 OK 196 Reallocation Event Count 0x32 100 100 0 0 OK 197 Current Pending Sector Count 0x22 100 100 0 0 OK 198 Off-line Scan Uncorrectable 0x08 100 100 0 0 OK 199 Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 0x0a 200 200 0 0 OK =============================================================================== But the temperature is returned properly from another CLI command, along with some other data. root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# /boot/cli32 disk info drv=10 Drive Information =============================================================== IDE Channel : 10 Model Name : HGST HDN726060ALE610 Serial Number : NAG40xxx Firmware Rev. : APGNT517 Disk Capacity : 6001.2GB Device State : NORMAL Timeout Count : 0 Media Error Count : 0 Device Temperature : 28 C SMART Read Error Rate : 100(16) SMART Spinup Time : 100(24) SMART Reallocation Count : 100(5) SMART Seek Error Rate : 100(67) SMART Spinup Retries : 100(60) SMART Calibration Retries : N.A.(N.A.) =============================================================== With a little work, I could create a smartctl replacement that would simulate running smartctl for Areca cards and produce similar formatted output, or otherwise call the real smartctl. I may play around with that. All my digging uncovered some other facts. Like JBOD mode is not exactly JBOD mode. It creates a RAID array of one disk. People running ZFS off of these controllers had issues with JBOD drives dropping offline when drive errors occurred. I tend to use NAS rated drives that respond quickly and don't cause this affect, but it is something to consider. At this point I'm sorry to say that I cannot recommend this controller for a casual unRAID user that wants to operate their system as an appliance. But for tinkerers on a budget and bargain hunters, this may be a good option. I am undecided whether to return mine. Probably will keep one. I need a controller to replace a BR10i that does not support drives > 2T in my backup array and this will just fit the bill with my smartctl trick. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 This is still good for RAIDed drives i.e. RAID0/RAID1 or hybrids. With the replaceable RAM and a BBU you can have a nice write back cached RAID drive. I don't know that I see it totally as a bust as it has an alarm when drives get off the bus. It would be interesting to see what the drive does if it finds drives with allot of reallocated or pending sectors. Quote Link to comment
c3 Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 I got around to testing this today. I was using an old machine that I use mostly for preclearing. It runs 5.0.5 (32 bit). My 6TB looked like 1.6T drives. Was able to plug the controller into Ethernet port and upgrade the firmware. Very easy process. After the firmware updated the drives correctly reported as 6TB. I set the controller to JBOD mode, and told it not the truncate the capacity (by default it truncates to the nearest 10G). Maybe drives are always in even 10G capacity, I don't know. Booted unRAID. Drives are seen. Names a little odd but ok. Bringing up a smart report created a surprise. The drive attributes didn't show up. Mix of accurate and inaccurate information. smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.9.11p-unRAID] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Vendor: HGST Product: HDN726060ALE610 Revision: R001 User Capacity: 6,001,175,126,016 bytes [6.00 TB] Logical block size: 512 bytes Rotation Rate: 10000 rpm Logical Unit id: 0x0004d92791e8d860 Serial number: NAG41xxx Device type: disk Transport protocol: Fibre channel (FCP-2) Local Time is: Fri Feb 27 14:08:57 2015 PST SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled Temperature Warning: Disabled or Not Supported === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 30 C Drive Trip Temperature: 25 C Manufactured in week 30 of year 2002 Specified cycle count over device lifetime: 4278190080 Accumulated start-stop cycles: 256 Elements in grown defect list: 0 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 Non-medium error count: 0 Device does not support Self Test logging Tried lots of options but that's the best I got. Dug and dug and found that there was a change made in the 1.51 Areca firmware to make controllers work with smartctl. But the latest version for this controller and other bargain cards (which are termed "legacy" on their website meaning, I suppose, not being updated further) is 1.49. So more digging and I found an Areca utility called CLI. The CLI program will output the drive attributes. (Except the temperature). It may be that the real temperature is embedded in the raw bits somehow and could be culled out. root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# /boot/cli32 disk smart drv=10 S.M.A.R.T Information For Drive[#10] # Attribute Items Flag Value Worst Thres Raw State =============================================================================== 1 Raw Read Error Rate 0x0b 100 100 16 0 OK 2 Throughput Performance 0x05 138 138 54 100 OK 3 Spin Up Time 0x07 100 100 24 0 OK 4 Start/Stop Count 0x12 100 100 0 3 OK 5 Reallocated Sector Count 0x33 100 100 5 0 OK 7 Seek Error Rate 0x0b 100 100 67 0 OK 8 Seek Time Performance 0x05 128 128 20 18 OK 9 Power-on Hours Count 0x12 100 100 0 76 OK 10 Spin Retry Count 0x13 100 100 60 0 OK 12 Device Power Cycle Count 0x32 100 100 0 3 OK 192 Power-off Retract Count 0x32 100 100 0 5 OK 193 Load Cycle Count 0x12 100 100 0 5 OK 194 Temperature 0x02 214 214 0 917532 OK 196 Reallocation Event Count 0x32 100 100 0 0 OK 197 Current Pending Sector Count 0x22 100 100 0 0 OK 198 Off-line Scan Uncorrectable 0x08 100 100 0 0 OK 199 Ultra DMA CRC Error Count 0x0a 200 200 0 0 OK =============================================================================== But the temperature is returned properly from another CLI command, along with some other data. root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# /boot/cli32 disk info drv=10 Drive Information =============================================================== IDE Channel : 10 Model Name : HGST HDN726060ALE610 Serial Number : NAG40xxx Firmware Rev. : APGNT517 Disk Capacity : 6001.2GB Device State : NORMAL Timeout Count : 0 Media Error Count : 0 Device Temperature : 28 C SMART Read Error Rate : 100(16) SMART Spinup Time : 100(24) SMART Reallocation Count : 100(5) SMART Seek Error Rate : 100(67) SMART Spinup Retries : 100(60) SMART Calibration Retries : N.A.(N.A.) =============================================================== With a little work, I could create a smartctl replacement that would simulate running smartctl for Areca cards and produce similar formatted output, or otherwise call the real smartctl. I may play around with that. All my digging uncovered some other facts. Like JBOD mode is not exactly JBOD mode. It creates a RAID array of one disk. People running ZFS off of these controllers had issues with JBOD drives dropping offline when drive errors occurred. I tend to use NAS rated drives that respond quickly and don't cause this affect, but it is something to consider. At this point I'm sorry to say that I cannot recommend this controller for a casual unRAID user that wants to operate their system as an appliance. But for tinkerers on a budget and bargain hunters, this may be a good option. I am undecided whether to return mine. Probably will keep one. I need a controller to replace a BR10i that does not support drives > 2T in my backup array and this will just fit the bill with my smartctl trick. Try smartctl -a -d areca,1 /dev/arcmsr0 Quote Link to comment
interwebtech Posted February 28, 2015 Share Posted February 28, 2015 Crap. Knew i should have waited. Have one on the way here. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 Try smartctl -a -d areca,1 /dev/arcmsr0 Nope. root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# smartctl -a -d areca,1 /dev/arcmsr0 smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.9.11p-unRAID] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Smartctl open device: /dev/arcmsr0 [areca_disk#01_enc#01] failed: Input/output error Also tried this (using disk 10) ... root@TowerPC:/boot/unmenu# smartctl -a -d areca,10 /dev/arcmsr0 smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.9.11p-unRAID] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Unable to open /proc/scsi/sg/device_hdr for reading do_scsi_cmnd_io with write buffer failed code = ffffffff Smartctl open device: /dev/arcmsr0 [areca_disk#10_enc#01] failed: Input/output error Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 Try smartctl -a -d areca,1 /dev/arcmsr0 That ain't gonna work on unRAID. You need to run lsscsi -g to get the generic SCSI device of the controller.... and use that as the final parameter for the device. Assuming the controler generic device is /dev/sg7, to get SMART info on drive 9 in enclosure 2, run: smartctl -a -d areca,9/2 /dev/sg7 Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 1, 2015 Author Share Posted March 1, 2015 bubbaq - Thanks for the tip. Will try to make that work tomorrow. Had a question, though, It seems that the Areca disk ID, which is usually the drive model / serial for HBA controllers, is some odd number (controller serial number?) with a sequence number at the end associated with the slot number. So moving a disk from slot to slot would easily confuse unRAID because the same name would be used for a different disk. Any way around this? Quote Link to comment
bubbaQ Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 Had a question, though, It seems that the Areca disk ID, which is usually the drive model / serial for HBA controllers, is some odd number (controller serial number?) with a sequence number at the end associated with the slot number. So moving a disk from slot to slot would easily confuse unRAID because the same name would be used for a different disk. Any way around this? Yes, you have to edit the udev naming rules in /lib/udev/rules.d/60-persistent-storage.rules and then run "udevadm trigger" to have them re-read. See my post on this topic here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=30956.msg280914#msg280914 Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 1, 2015 Author Share Posted March 1, 2015 bubbaQ! Awesome information man!! The tips you provided work perfectly. I now move this controller from not recommended to recommended with only some very minor reservations that I am still working on. I will be posting in the "Hard Drives and Controllers" with instructions to configure a unRAID for an Areca controller, crediting you with the most vital parts of the information. One more question bubbaQ. Is there a way to query the Areca to tell if a drive is spun up or down? Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 ARECA INSTRUCTIONS FOR UNRAID Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 Alas the deal has expired. No price even close now. Quote Link to comment
pkn Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 ... No price even close now. Plenty!.. if you happen to have a PCI-X slot for it Or if those guys are saying the truth and this little thingy can actually do what multi-hundred-dollars PCI-X-toPCI-e bridges are doing... http://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-Express-x1-Slot-to-PCI-PCI-X-32Bit-Adapter-Card-/261603863167 Quote Link to comment
pkn Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 ARECA INSTRUCTIONS FOR UNRAID Thanks! Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.