Hey guys! I've had two I/O Crest 4 port sata expander marvel cards running in my Windows server for a few years now. Got them when I was much less experienced. Now that I've migrated over to Unraid, is there any risk of running those if they've been solid or should I get an LSI asap?

14 minutes ago, AdamTroy said:

should I get an LSI asap

This.

14 minutes ago, AdamTroy said:

4 port sata expander marvel cards

recipe for disaster. marvell cards are bad enough, add a port expander to the mix...

Avoid and get an LSI SAS card.

Okay gotcha I'll definetly replace them! What are the risks with using the marvel sata cards? Was Windows just not reporting errors or will the cards just eventually fail me?

They drop disks offline mostly. They were quite usable with early versions of Unraid but as time has passed they have become more and more of a liability. This thread is what brought it to my attention:

 

 

and it has just got worse since. I and many other people were using Marvell-based Supermicro SAS2LP-MV8 controllers and when they became unreliable even with IOMMU disabled we had to swap them out for LSI-based cards. I like the Dell Perc H310, which you can get quite cheaply on Ebay as used but reliable server pulls. They usually come with RAID firmware but they can be cross-flashed to LSI IT firmware, which makes them very suitable for Unraid.

I believe that the Windows drivers were written by Marvell, whereas the Linux drivers were reverse-engineered without any official support. So they will probably continue to work well enough under Windows. It's a shame, because when it worked, the SAS2LP-MV8 worked straight out of the box without any need for cross-flashing.

 

Edited October 19, 20196 yr by John_M
typo

Very interesting! So to summarize, I'm basically gambling with the sata cards. Thank you for your help guys, I'll switch them out as soon as I can!