Asus P5PE-VM

[BillK]

Based on the recommendations (& BIOS settings) of others, I've just finished building a new unRAID server.

 

Case:              4U Rackmount Case

Drive Cage:      SATA Backplane (room for 4 drives)

Power Supply:  Enermax NoiseTaker II 600W

Motherboard:    Asus P5PE-VM

CPU:                Intel Celeron D 2.53Ghz

Memory:          Corsair 512MB DDR400

Controller:        Promise SATA300 TX4 (2)

Hard Drive:        Seagate 500GB 7K 16MB SATA2 (2)

Flash Drive:        Lexar Jumpdrive 2.0 Pro 256MB

 

Special thanks to mutant_matt and Roscoe62 for posting their BIOS settings.  The only wrinkle in the build was the need to run the HP Flash Formatter tool on my older Lexar Jumpdrive Pro, and the fact that the Asus MB would substitute other devices into the first boot field when it couldn't recognize the Jumpdrive (prior to running HP's software program).  Everything appears to be running normally now, although I haven't put any data on the system yet.

[Roscoe62]

Glad to hear it's running well for you Bill.

 

Just watch out for the onboard LAN port. A couple of us (me included) have had that die on us, but everyone else seems OK.

[BillK]

Just watch out for the onboard LAN port. A couple of us (me included) have had that die on us, but everyone else seems OK.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I will.  I now have two more Seagate 500GB drives on order to fill out my first Promise controller.

[WannaTheater]

Hi Billlyk,

 

Did you ever fill out the rest of the Promise SATA300 TX4 controller?  Any problems (read errors?)

 

I have 3 drives hanging off my controller, and always get read errors when moving large blocks of data to disk.  The drives work fine on the motherboard controller.

 

Thanks!

 

[BillK]

Did you ever fill out the rest of the Promise SATA300 TX4 controller?  Any problems (read errors?)

 

Yes.  I now have four identical Seagate 500GB 7K 16MB SATA drives hanging off a Promise SATA300 TX4 controller.

 

And yes, I did see one read error (see http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=434.0) just after I finished adding two more drives and copying about 400GB of data onto the system.  I rebooted, and the errors have not continued, but activity has been fairly light (I've been waiting for a new UPS to arrive).

[WannaTheater]

I usually see about 1-2 read errors per 50G (on drives connected to the TX4).  But the most recent drive I added provided 23 read errors for 80G written (I now have 3 drives attached).  I moved the same drive to the motherboard controller, the wrote the same 80G of data ...  zero read errors.

 

I'm in contact with Promise.  Based on your answer, I'm starting to think there is a compatibility issue with this card and the ASUS P5PE-VM motherboard.

 

Also, if your parity drive was also connected to the TX4, then this solidifies my thinking.

 

-Greg

 

 

[BillK]

I usually see about 1-2 read errors per 50G (on drives connected to the TX4).  But the most recent drive I added provided 23 read errors for 80G written (I now have 3 drives attached).  I moved the same drive to the motherboard controller, the wrote the same 80G of data ...  zero read errors.

 

I'm in contact with Promise.  Based on your answer, I'm starting to think there is a compatibility issue with this card and the ASUS P5PE-VM motherboard.

 

Also, if your parity drive was also connected to the TX4, then this solidifies my thinking.

 

Hmmm...

 

Given the feedback from Tom (see my link above), I would have suspected one or more of your original SATA cables wasn't connected quite right or your power supply is running close to the edge capacity-wise.  I swapped my SATA cables out for the ones that came with the Promise controller (the ones with the metal clips at both ends) and haven't seen a problem since. In fact, I just finished transferring 155GB of data from an old external USB drive to disk4 with no errors (see below).

 

Recommend you move the cables back to the Promise card and run your test one more time before throwing in the towel.

 

 

[WannaTheater]

Thanks for the info. 

 

As far as cables, I've tried the ones that came with the promise card... Mine were cheap red ones (no metal clips)  I've also tried the WD cables (secure-connect?)... with no better results.  I wonder if the Seagate vs. WD drives makes a difference.

 

Power supply is nowhere near capacity.