Stable RAID5 on ICH10R with 3x Samsung F4 2TB HD204UI's any1?

[KrazeyKami]

Hi all,

I bought 3x WD20EARS for my ICH10R raid 5 setup. Turns out a big mistake, and i guess it's the problem with the TLER not being enabled / available on the WD20EARS. They failed twice on the Initializing, thus this is my 4th day trying to initialize the raid -.-
I'm using the Intel Rapid Storage Tool 9.6.

I'm looking to trade em in for 3x HD204UI's.
I can't seem to find any reports on problems with this drive, regarding to CCTL (supposedly the equivelant of WD's TLER). Does any1 know if they have the CCTL enabled, where as the WD20EARS have no more TLER?
I think this is one of the key factors in making a stable RAID5 (so they won't drop out of the array in case of a bad sector).

I hope these drives (with the necessary Firmware upgrade ofc. http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...bbs_msg_id=386) will result in a stable RAID5 via ICH10R onboard. I use an Asus P6T SE.

Im really curious if anyone have been running a stable RAID5 with the HD204UI's on ICH10R.


PS: What's with this alignment? I understand that when you use Win7 x64, there is no need to manually change something to get em aligned proper, yet some people claim that in a RAID array they need to be aligned?
Could any1 explain as to how and where u make this change, and especially, why?


Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Kami.

My setup:

Asus P6T SE, Bios v.0808
Intel i7 920 @ 2,6 GHz *stock*
ProlimaTech MegaHalems + 2 Cooler Master120mm fans
6 GB OCZ Gold PC3-8500U and 6 GB OCZ Gold PC3-10700U
nVidia GTX295
Sound Blaster Fatal1ty X-Fi
Cooler Master 1000W Real PowerPro
1x Intel X-25 M SSD 80G (SATA 0) (non-raid)
2x 300GB Maxtor 6L300S0 (SATA 1, 2) (non-raid)
3x 2TB WD20EARS (SATA 3, 4, 5) (RAID5)
Sweex PU102 SATA150 Controller
1x 1TB WD Caviar (PU102-Port 1)
1x GGW-H20L BlueRay (PU102-Port 2)
RWCooler Master Stacker 831 case with 6x Cooler Master 120mm fans
Windows 7 x64 Professional

 

[Stereodude]

The Samsung drives should be fine. I've been using their 5400RPM EcoGreen consumer drives (1.5TB) in RAID-6 arrays on SAS RAID cards for ever 1 year without any issue. I don't see why the Intel ICHxR would be any different. I've used Seagate drives in RAID-1 on an ICH9R with no issues.

Heck, I haven't had issues with Seagate or Samsung consumer drives running in RAID (1, 5, or 6) on Intel ICHxR, Dell PERC 5i, Dell PERC 6i, or Jmicron controllers. The Samsung drives (like all the others) do not have short error recovery enabled as it's not desirable for a consumer grade drive. Reportedly you can change the CCTL setting via an ATA command (as on most drives), but the setting won't survive a power cycle.

Basically, I think WD sabotages their consumer drives so they don't work in RAID. :skepo: There is no way you're getting to get an Unrecoverable Bit Error that frequently. In addition, all HD maker's drives should be just a vulnerable to a UBE as the WD drives, yet I don't haven't heard of the same issue (drives dropping from arrays) with any other brand.

You may have some minor performance issues from the 4k sectors, but you probably won't notice. I used HD203WI's in my last build since I didn't want to mess with the potential impact of the internal 4k sectors since you can't control and don't know how the RAID controller aligns the data to the drives.

 

[KrazeyKami]

Hi Stereo,

Thank you for your elaborate explanation.
Currently i flashed the HD204UI's with the latest firmware and popped 'em in a RAID5 array via ICH10R. It's currently running the Initializing via the Intel Rapid Storage Tool, got em on 64k data stripe and enabled Write-Back cache just for the initializing. I'll turn it off when complete.

Anything i forgot / u recommend? There is no need for me to do anything with the CCTL settings or with the alignment / 4k sectors?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Kami.

 

[Stereodude]

I think you'll be fine just leaving the CCTL settings alone. There isn't anything you can do about the 4k sectors, so no point worrying about it.

 

[KrazeyKami]

Thanks alot m8

I'll post my findings / results here so other people may benefit from it.

Regards,
Kami.

 

[KrazeyKami]

Well,

Here are the testresults on the write / read speed.

After 24 hours of initializing, i was dieing to toy around with the Stripe Size vs. NTFS Cluster Size. And the results are... suprising.

I apologize for the large image.

Long story short; My best results on my current setup:
RAID5 / 3 disks (HD204UI's): 128 stripe size with 32k NTFS Cluster size, with Write Back Cache on.
In that configuration:

Seq. Read: 240 MB/s
Seq. Write: 261 MB/s.

I am stunned. I've read threads all over the place of people trying to get the best out of their setup while being stuck on ridiculous low write speeds, and i read on various forums, that the most optimal setting for a 3-disk RAID5 = stripe size x 2 (3 disks - 1 parity disk) must equal cluster size. Thus, thinking that RAID5 Stripe 32k = 64 Cluster.

As u can see in my results, in that config i only get:

Seq. Read: 219 MB/s
Seq. Write: 222 MB/s.

Further more, there aren't that much big differences in the various combo's.
There are 2 combo's that suffer heavily from having WBC turned off, but for the most, it didn't matter that much on Seq. Writing.

The thing that stood out to most and was kinda interesting, is that the 64k stripe / 32k cluster with WBC off only gives 25 MB/s Seq. Write, and the 128k stripe / 32k cluster gives around 38 MB/s.
With the further exception of 128k stripe / 64k cluster (168 MB/s), all is above 200 MB/s Seq. Write speed, wether WBC is ON or OFF.

So, basicly... im stunned.

Any comments on this? And maybe some feedback wether or not this 240 read / 260 write is good?

p.s.,
I didn't bother with letting the benchmark go through the entire 4k / 64k tests, as first glance they never got above the 0,8 mb/s.

However, when copying a 4 GB file from my SSD to the Array, i got 260-320 MB/s according to Windows and the file was there in no time.

This practical test was also done to make sure i didn't suffer from cache / benchmark polution. I did the the tests a number of times, and also re-created the entire volume / partition on every try.

Kind regards,
Kami.

 

[KrazeyKami]

After 24 hours of initializing, here are my final results:

Onboard ICH10R (Asus P6T SE)
RAID5:
3x HD204UI
128k Stripe
32k Cluster
WBC ON
No Manual Alignment or other tweaks needed.

READ: 251 MB/s
WRITE: 265 MB/s

Wonder how long it stays stable

 

[Project22a]

Bumping an old thread but I thought it might be nice to know that there's a utility called HDAT2 that lets you modify the CCTL settings on the Samsung drives (and ERC on Seagate drives too, apparently). I've successfully enabled it (to 7 seconds) on all my 1.5TB Ecogreen HD154UI drives and I would expect that it should work the same on the HD204UI. Whether or not the setting persists through a hard power cycle, I have yet to test. Will keep you guys updated.

 

[Bozo]

Interesting that you used a utility made for testing SSD's.

 

[maxoptimus]

Bumping an old thread but I thought it might be nice to know that there's a utility called HDAT2 that lets you modify the CCTL settings on the Samsung drives (and ERC on Seagate drives too, apparently). I've successfully enabled it (to 7 seconds) on all my 1.5TB Ecogreen HD154UI drives and I would expect that it should work the same on the HD204UI. Whether or not the setting persists through a hard power cycle, I have yet to test. Will keep you guys updated.

I agree. CCTL/ERC/TREL must be setted permanently or under startup or boot before Win7 linux/fedora and then reboot Windows.

Ass I read but don't tested HDAT2 can't help at all new drives.

I also going to buy adaptec and 2 then 8 Sumsung ecogreen F4.

P.S. what means HDAT2 for SSD? http://www.storageforum.net/forum/images/smilies/drunken_smilie.gif
HDAT was created when nobody known what mean SSD. http://www.storageforum.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

 

[maxoptimus]

HDAT was created before any SSD, what do you mean under test SSD.

I also think ERC/CCTL/TLER shoud be changed if you don't use RAID drives.
Also seagate for raids drives use 6sec (i.e. smartmontools -l scterc,60,60 csmi0,2...)
also smartmontools 4.51 compatible with windows and intel onbord raid.

Also I have baracudaXT x4 in raid5 (intel onboard) and all work near 6month good but one drive become not very good, reaocating tooks to much time and it was droped out (marked as bad).... (SMART show only for it 16 realocated count, all other drives work quite anf have 0). (smartmontools can't help sct blocked by many vendors(ST,WD), will try DAT from DOS but I think result will bw same for baracudaXT)

I think about samsung ecof4 and adaptec, looks like I am going to try boot ubuntu (etc) before win and automaticaly set ERC and reboot back to win.