December 18, 200619 yr Hey, this is my first time installing this product. Looks good so far. Now a question: I am using 2x 750GB and 1x 400GB IDE drives. I just formatted them through the web interface, and it now says it is building the parity drive. Why? There is no data? Also, even if it does have to do this, why is it going to take over 12,000 minutes??? (over 200 hours) Some insight would help. Thanks.
December 19, 200619 yr Does it STILL say 12000 minutes? It usually says some high number but if you wait it will go down dramtically as it ramps up. Parity can still be calculated for no data. Annoying yes, but since it is pure binary it prob can't recognize that the entire drive is the same without files. Even if it did it would still take a while to write all those 0's or 1's.
January 5, 200719 yr Author Total size: 732,574,552 KB Current position: 81,024 (0.0%) Estimated speed: 927 KB/sec Estimated finish: 13165.7 minutes how long should i wait for it to pick up? What speeds should I be seeing? parity device: /dev/hda (hda1) PATA:ST3750640A/3QD00X98 disk1 device: /dev/hdc (hdc1) PATA:ST3750640A/3QD05B4A disk2 device: /dev/hdd (hdd1) PATA:ST3400633A/5NF25FX6 2x seagate 750gb (1 as parity) 1x seagate 400gb all PATA
January 5, 200719 yr The web-page does not refresh itself... Have you pressed the 'refresh" button on your browser? Now... if you have pressed the refresh button and still see 12000 minutes you should suspect the IDE cables you used. Linux will fall back to the much slower PIO mode on the drives if errors occur. Check the syslog file for DMA errors. (See other threads for details, you are not the first to have a "slow drive") It is likely the IDE cable, the disk controller, with the power supply and the disk itself last to suspect. Joe L.
January 6, 200719 yr Author I was out since my las message. Hit refresh... Total size: 732,574,552 KB Current position: 10,596,352 (1.4%) Estimated speed: 979 KB/sec Estimated finish: 12255.7 minutes so I guess I'll have to look into it. These should be good cables, but I will check.
January 6, 200719 yr Author Jan 6 22:44:42 Tower kernel: Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4 Jan 6 22:44:42 Tower kernel: ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx Jan 6 22:44:42 Tower kernel: hda: ST3750640A, ATA DISK drive Jan 6 22:44:42 Tower kernel: hdc: ST3750640A, ATA DISK drive Jan 6 22:44:42 Tower kernel: hdd: ST3400633A, ATA DISK drive could this be a BIOS setting?
January 6, 200719 yr Nothing unusual there. What motherboard? I'd like to see your entire syslog right after a re-boot.
January 6, 200719 yr Author Hey, The motherboard is MSI K8NGM2-FID mATX. Pulled from my previous HTPC build, advantage is onboard video. This is an AMD board with an Opteron 144 (1.8GHz) and 2x 512MB PC3200 Kingston HyperX RAM. NVIDIA ® MCP51 (MCP430) Chipset - Supports dual channel native SATA controller up to 300MB/s with RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5 - Ultra DMA 66/100/133 master mode PCI EIDE controller - ACPI & PC2001 compliant enhanced power management - Supports USB2.0 up to 8 ports - Supports HD audio Here is a link: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8NGM2-FID I have the SATA ports disabled in BIOS, and am using 2x 80-pin IDE cables, primary is to one Seagate 750GB for parity (middle connector empty) and secondary is connected to another 750GB on the end and a 400GB in the middle. One weird thing is, if I reboot, it hangs on: usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1 If I walk over to the machine and hit the reset button, it boots fine to the login prompt. I've attached settings for all 3 drives, as well as the syslog after just rebooting, as mentioned above.
January 6, 200719 yr Aside from a bunch of these messages I don't see anything unusual in the syslog: Jan 6 23:32:45 Tower insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.33/kernel/drivers/scsi/sata_nv.o: insmod sata_nv failed Jan 6 23:32:45 Tower insmod: /lib/modules/2.4.33/kernel/drivers/scsi/sata_nv.o: init_module: No such device Those messages are associated with nvidia sata driver, which I wouldn't expect to see if you have sata disabled in bios. I don't know why there are so many of those messages in there I downloaded the manual for that m/b and only thing I can see in the bios setup is to check that "PCI IDE BusMaster" is Enabled & double-check your "Serial-ATA 1 & 2" is set to Disabled (though that shouldn't be necessary). The fact you get some strange behavior booting the USB flash is not a surprise - you might check that you're using the lastest bios version. From the settings.txt file it appears that the hard drives are not running in DMA mode for some reason. You can confirm this using these commands: hdparm -i /dev/hda hdparm -i /dev/hdc hdparm -i /dev/hdd Post results back here. If indeed not in DMA mode, there is a way to force DMA: hdparm -d1 -Xudma5 /dev/hda hdparm -d1 -Xudma5 /dev/hdc hdparm -d1 -Xudma5 /dev/hdd
January 6, 200719 yr Author I just flashed to the newest BIOS, v3.60 reset to failsafe defaults, then to optimized and changed settings accordingly. As you mentioned above, those are both set properly. Did a fresh reboot here are some new attachments settings - same as above, but I re-ran the commands after this last reboot syslog - new, after this reboot hdparm - the results of the first set of commands you asked me to run force - the attempted force and results thanks, hopefully I can get this running PS - The drives / array shows as "Stopped" in the web interface command area, just FYI.
January 6, 200719 yr There's conflicting information - the 'settings.txt' shows that drive is not in DMA mode, yet the 'hdparm -i' command shows that it is, yet 'hdparm -d1' is "operation not supported" and indicates not using DMA... I think probably there must be an updated IDE driver for the nvidia mcp51 chipset on that m/b; I'll see if I can find one...
January 6, 200719 yr Author I couldn't really find much, as I'm not used to searching for linux drivers but I found this "MCP51 support was merged in the 2.6.12-rc series" I noticed you are using 2.4.33 kernel, but you could apply driver patches to that I'm sure, so I'm probably not much help LMK if you find anything.
January 9, 200719 yr Author hey, I know you are busy, but any breaks on this topic? I'm just eager to get goin on this and then upgrade/add more drives if it suits my needs.
January 19, 200719 yr trueimage, Did you resolve your PATA performance issue. I have the same problem on a nForce-430 motherboard (Asus M2NPV-VM). Did the BIOS upgrade affect the situation in any way?
January 19, 200719 yr Author BIOS upgrade didn't help anything No resolution yet, still waiting for Tom to get back to me
January 24, 200719 yr We're going to have to get an nForce motherboard in order to figure this out. We're on the verge of a new server product release & then after that we can look into AMD-based motherboards. I know this is not the answer you wanted to hear, but it's the best we can do at the present.
January 24, 200719 yr Author no problem, I just wanted a response I'll see if I can flip this board and cpu for an intel variant thanks
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