Marvell and LSI problems with Unraid?

[johnvid]

Hi there,

 

This is a shot in the dark but here goes nothing...

 

I’ve read somewhere that Marvell controllers and Unraid do not go hand in hand. But I do not know if one of my Unraid problems is related. Because I have a Asrock EP2C602 which uses the Marvell controller and just now my 8TB Ironwolf Harddisk died on it. It was connected to the onboard Marvell controller. 

 

A few days before another Harddisk from Seagate got corrupted and would not work with Unraid anymore. This last Harddisk has no problems in another computer and scans with a 100% health. I even put it back on the Unraid machine and it is working fine again. Strange?!?! Don’t know for sure if this Harddisk was connected to the Marvell controller before. 

 

The 8TB Ironwolf is in a worse shape. It only ticks and gives a error code with the Seagate dos tool.

 

Could this all be related to the onboard Marvell controller?

Edited October 15, 2017 by johnvid

[itimpi]

Although there are issues with some Marvell controllers (drives dropping offline, parity check errors) I have not seen any reports of them actually causing damage to drives.

 

it does sound as if your Ironwolf drive has died if it is making ticking noises like you describe and is not recognised by Seatools.   Unfortunately even relatively new drives can die unexpectedly

[johnvid]

12 minutes ago, itimpi said:

Although there are issues with some Marvell controllers (drives dropping offline, parity check errors) I have not seen any reports of them actually causing damage to drives.

 

it does sound as if your Ironwolf drive has died if it is making ticking noises like you describe and is not recognised by Seatools.   Unfortunately even relatively new drives can die unexpectedly

Thanks for your quick response. The drive is recognised by seatools but with the shorttest it gives me the error code to send it in. So I’m gonna do that ofcourse. But don’t know if I wanna use the Marvell controller anymore. Because I have a 16 bay case but only 10 Sata connections if I don’t use the Marvell controller. 

Edited October 15, 2017 by johnvid

[JorgeB]

You definitely don't want to use the Marvell controller on that board, they are known to drop disks frequently, there's a firmware upgrade that mitigates but doesn't fix the issue, though like Itimpi mentioned it won't physically damage a disk.

[johnvid]

57 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

You definitely don't want to use the Marvell controller on that board, they are known to drop disks frequently, there's a firmware upgrade that mitigates but doesn't fix the issue, though like Itimpi mentioned it won't physically damage a disk.

 

Hmm that’s a shame. I also used to have a LSI 9211-8i (it mode) in this server but that controller gave UDMA errors so I changed the cables for new LSI cables but gave same problem. When I precleare a drive it would say at the Post Read that the drive was not empty. When I used the onboard Marvell or Intel controller it would preclear just fine. I thought the LSI would be the best choice for Unraid but I ended up removing it from the server.

 

any idea what that error could be or is it maybe somehow related to my other errors?

[JorgeB]

LSI work fine and are the recommend HBA for unRAID, if it's not working for you there's a problem somewhere, controller, cable or some other issue, I remember reading that there's possibly an issue with them and some 10TB Seagate Enterprise disks.

[johnvid]

2 minutes ago, johnnie.black said:

LSI work fine and are the recommend HBA for unRAID, if it's not working for you there's a problem somewhere, controller, cable or some other issue, I remember reading that there's possibly an issue with them and some 10TB Seagate Enterprise disks.

 

Are you telling me that maybe the drive size could be the problem with the LSI card? I also had a problem when I connected 2 850EVO SSD’s to this controller. Can’t remember exactly what the problem was but the problem ended when I connected 1 of those SSD’s to another controller. 

[JorgeB]

Just now, johnvid said:

Are you telling me that maybe the drive size could be the problem with the LSI card?

 

No, those specific Seagate disks ( ST10000NM0016), still not confirmed but there is more than one person having issues with them, not in unRAID though.

[srfnmnk]

I have issues with several drives types, brands and capacities with Marvell controllers. 1 TB seagate, 4TB Seagate and a 5 TB Toshiba have all dropped off during parity checks. I finally broke down and bought an LSI controller off of eBay and a SAS expander, total 25 drives all working for a while now with no issue.