No, it does recognize the drive. It looks like it can't write OR read though, judging by the way it failed verifying all my disk immediately straight from within the card's BIOS. I RMAd it with Supermicro, we'll see what happens when I get my new card.... and who knows when that will be!

 

Also, the errors aren't parity errors (are they?) They are the errors that show up on the main webGUI page next to Read and Write.

Those are "read" errors.  Usually media errors on disks (un-readable sectors)

What should I do about it?

No, it does recognize the drive. It looks like it can't write OR read though, judging by the way it failed verifying all my disk immediately straight from within the card's BIOS. I RMAd it with Supermicro, we'll see what happens when I get my new card.... and who knows when that will be!

 

Also, the errors aren't parity errors (are they?) They are the errors that show up on the main webGUI page next to Read and Write.

Those are "read" errors.  Usually media errors on disks (un-readable sectors)

 

do they appear next to one or many hard disks? cause if they appear next to many hard disks, this probably means that the problem is not with the HDDs but with the onboard SATA controller or (more propably) with the AOC-SASLP-MV8

Only the parity drive. I read up on it and it looks like it was probably just from a hard reset.

I received my replacement card back from Newegg. Initially, it all looked good. I was able to move my last data drive from eSATA to the new controller card, and write to it without issue. The problems started when I tried to add another drive, or rather to preclear it. I started to see the same behavior of random reboots. Urgh.

 

Well, I finally got a chance to get down to some serious testing. My video card on my main computer was acting up, so I decided to do a testing day today. I took down the main computer, and took the power supply out. I hooked that power supply up to my unRAID box, and powered it up. I figure at this point that it's either the power supply or the motherboard at fault. So I tried to write some data to a drive on the Supermicro card, and within seconds, it freezes and reboots.

 

At this point, I'm pretty sure it's the motherboard, and specifically the PCI-E slot. I used this opportunity to test my suspect video card in this system. No video, nothing. I used two other cards I have laying around: same thing. So I have submitted an RMA to Gigabyte for warranty replacement on this motherboard. Since I don't want to wait for the RMA to go back and forth, I've decided to buy another motherboard and CPU. I got the Asus and Sempron combo at Newegg. Sadly, I missed my chance at that fantastic Supermicro deal. Grrr. I'll kick this mobo and CPU over to build another HTPC for our bedroom. I'll split this pair of 2GB sticks of RAM, since neither unRAID nor XBMC/Boxee require all that much.

Well, the replacement motherboard should be here today. I'm really looking forward to finally feeling like the server is "done". At least for now.

Dammit, this is going in entirely the wrong direction.  After getting the new motherboard and CPU installed and configured, it won't let me boot from the flash drive. I've tried auto, Hard Disk and forced FDD, all to no avail. It definitely detects the flash drive in the BIOS.

You've checked the boot priority I assume?  Does the flash drive show up in that list?

 

Also try different USB ports.

And made sure there is no U3 partition on the flash drive?

 

I got my replacement Supermicro card and was able to add a 1TB drive to my array with it. Hooray! Then I upgraded it to a 1.5TB and the system rebooted after about 10 minutes of trying to rebuild the array.... not a good sign. I also added a cache drive at the same time and I was doing a couple strenuous tasks on the other hard drives at the same time, though. I'm going to not touch it and see if it completes a second time, it should only take 4 hours.

I finally got everything going. It was a combination of U3 partition, Asus' stupid BIOS, and a dumb error on my part. After I deleted the U3 partition, I didn't realize that the drive wouldn't be bootable I didn't discover this until several hours of frustration later, when I finally gave up and put my old motherboard in, only to discover that it wouldn't boot. I ran syslinux on the drive, and it booted fine. When I finally got some time, I put the new motherboard back in, and it booted immediately.

 

I'm currently copying the last drive's worth of data over to the array, while pre clearing another drive. Everything seems good so far. It will be really nice to get this last drive in and assigned. I don't think I'll need a new drive for awhile; probably six months or so. 

Despite the one reboot, I was able to get my drives added. Everything is running smoothly, for now.

What power supply are you running?

Corsair 400w. I also tried some other brand 500w. The reboots only happen with the SuperMicro card in, and yes, they are still happening. Maybe it was a combo of a bad card and bad MoBo, because the card is working *sometimes* now. I ordered a new board.. we'll see.

What are your full hardware specs?  You could be overloading the PSU.  The Corsair 400w has 30A on the +12V rail, so it should be able to support 13 or 14 green drives.  If you are using 7200rpm or other power hungry drives, then that number will decrease.

It reboots even with 1 drive if it is on the SuperMicro. They are all 5400rpm. I'm positive it's the MoBo and I've already ordered a new one. Thanks for the help though! If the new MoBo somehow doesn't fix it I will come back with full specs.

That does sound just like the issue I was having. It would be rather strange if your motherboard was suffering from the same issue as mine, unless it's a known issue at Gigabyte. I know they went from rev 1.0 to rev 1.1 pretty quickly, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. I got this board last year as an open box special for about $50, so I can't complain too much.

 

Gigabyte RMAed the board pretty promptly, and I'll be shipping it out shortly. When it comes back, I'll likely put it back in the unRAID box. The Asus board I got has been pretty sketchy to set up for unRAId, and it has a better onboard video card (Radeon 4200 vs. 3200), so will serve better as an HTPC in the bedroom. I was also able to unlock the second core on the Sempron CPU, which I feel okay about doing on the HTPC, but not on my unRAID server. That's assuming I can put the AM3 Sempron into the AM2+ board. I'm pretty sure my AM2+ Athlon should work in the Asus board, which is supposed to support AM2/AM2+/AM3.

Well, I remembered that I also have a physically busted SATA port on the MoBo. I wonder if the issue is related to that? It worked for 6 months with it broken before this. Anyway, I'll know next week.

I had terrible trouble getting my two AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards to work on my MSI P6N Diamond Mobo http://www.msi.com/uploads/prod_73708180386aa254ea643aa20ae243ef.jpg

 

In the first pci-e x16 slot the server just kept rebooting

In the first  x 8 slot it would just hang on the boot

In the third x16 slot I just got a snow storm on my screen

In the fourth x8 slot the server would not even boot.

And after reading some of the posts here and elsewhere about these cards I was getting a little nervous. I could see nothing in bios that could cause these problems, the only positive was the fact that both cards produced the same results so I just reset Bios back to its factory settings and HEY PRESTO  both cards now show up in bios and boot up perfect. I cannot even see what has changed in bios.

 

I had terrible trouble getting my two AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards to work on my MSI P6N Diamond Mobo http://www.msi.com/uploads/prod_73708180386aa254ea643aa20ae243ef.jpg

 

In the first pci-e x16 slot the server just kept rebooting

In the first  x 8 slot it would just hang on the boot

In the third x16 slot I just got a snow storm on my screen

In the fourth x8 slot the server would not even boot.

And after reading some of the posts here and elsewhere about these cards I was getting a little nervous. I could see nothing in bios that could cause these problems, the only positive was the fact that both cards produced the same results so I just reset Bios back to its factory settings and HEY PRESTO  both cards now show up in bios and boot up perfect. I cannot even see what has changed in bios.

 

 

In my mobo i Had two PCI-E 16x slots and in order to make it work i had to use those 2 settings:

 

Dual Slot GFX Configuration: Manual

GFX Mode Select:Dual Mode

I got a new ECS A780GM-M3 Motherboard, and my server is now happily ticking along. Maybe it was a combination of a bad MoBo (PCI-E slot?) and bad Supermicro card, because replacing them separately didn't fix it, but replacing both worked great. My only complaint now is that parity sync is going at 25MB/sec instead of 100MB/sec like I got before. I only have 1 hard drive one the Supermicro card and 6 on the MoBo. Could changing to AHCI mode help?

Absolutely. If you're not in AHCI mode, you're stuck in IDE mode, which slows you way down.

My old MoBo didn't support AHCI or at least I couldn't find it in the BIOS), so I never had to bother with it. Thanks!

First: I'm rather much a newbie with Linux, so please be gentle.

 

I have a newly buildt server with  Intel S3420GLV motherboard,  where I have put the AOC-SASLP-MV8.

 

When I set a HD on the controller, Unraid can't see the harddisk.  When I use the onboard sata ports, there is no problem.

 

Being the newbie as I am,  I booted up ubuntu to figure out what happend.

 

Ubuntu can see both the onboard controller and the supermicro controller, and I can even see that it is using the "mvsas" driver.

 

When I set a HD on the onboard controller, it appears beneath the onboard contoller (in the ubuntu control panel)

But when I put the HD on the supermicro controller, it does not appear.

 

Just to eliminate the possibility of a cable error, I have tried two breakout cables and all 8 ports.

(Now, it MIGHT be that I have two defective cables, but what are the odds)

 

Has anyone a clue of what to do?

 

tia

 

Erik

 

 

 

Plug a monitor in to your server, and boot up. You should see the card doing its own POST sequence and disk detection. If you don't, then the card and motherboard aren't communicating properly. You either have a bad card or bad PCI-E slot as I did. Right now, I'd guess at a bad card.