From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sat May 15 14:30:33 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B1E6410656C4 for ; Sat, 15 May 2010 14:30:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from TERRY@tmk.com) Received: from server.tmk.com (server.tmk.com [204.141.35.63]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CA738FC0C for ; Sat, 15 May 2010 14:30:33 +0000 (UTC) Received: from tmk.com by tmk.com (PMDF V6.4 #37010) id <01NN548EB31C006UN1@tmk.com> for freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org; Sat, 15 May 2010 10:30:31 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 10:22:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Terry Kennedy In-reply-to: "Your message dated Sat, 15 May 2010 09:14:45 +0200" <4BEE49E5.1040005@thedarkside.nl> To: Pieter de Boer Message-id: <01NN54IPR7I0006UN1@tmk.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed References: <01NN4A2NF0M4006QOF@tmk.com> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Read / write timeouts on SATA disks connected to ICH9 X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 14:30:33 -0000 > Interesting. Which version of FreeBSD is this system running? I guess > you didn't experience any of the timeouts I'm seeing? 8-STABLE as of the 11th of this month, or thereabouts. No, I've never seen a disk timeout on that box. > Yeah, this R300 was bought second-hand and unfortunately the owner > pulled the RAID card out. It's something to consider, getting one of > those cards. Do you use the RAID-features of the drive and if so, does > that work well? I'm a bit hesitant to use hardware raid; it would be a > big plus if the RAID disks could also be used stand-alone if need be > (which is easy with gmirror because of its metadata being stored in the > drive's last sector). Does your system have hot-swap drive bays and the SAS backplane? If it at least has hot-swap bays, then you could always add the backplane, cable, and controller. I'm using the hardware mirroring on the SAS 6/iR card (with a pair of WD3000HLFS drives, since the previous owner took the factory drives out before selling the system). I haven't tried taking one of those drives and seeing if it will boot on a standalone SATA port. I have removed both drives, installed a scratch drive, and installed Windows on it to run one of the Dell update install- ers (not all of them come in DOS or Linux flavors). The controller didn't mind the swap a bit (or the swap back to the 2 RAID drives). That's a lot better than the old amr-based RAID cards. Terry Kennedy http://www.tmk.com terry@tmk.com New York, NY USA