Nforce 680i SLI hard disk controller limit

[Marios]

I have combined two hard disks of 2TB in Raid-0 on a 680i SLI ASUS motherboard.
The Raid BIOS reports I have 1.6TB disk instead of 3.6TB.
I entered Vista (from another hard disk) and formated the raid-0 in NTFS.
Vista can see one disk of 3.6TB which is correct.

My problem
When I turn off my PC overnight, then it doesn't start the first time.
It is stuck in recognizing the RAID arrays.
I have to restart, then everything is OK.

My questions
What is the limit of my Nforce 680i SLI raid controller?
Is this why the BIOS reports 1.6TB instead of 3.6TB?
Even though Vista can see the actual size of 3.6TB am I going to be able to store more than 2 or 3TB on this Raid-0 array or the controller in not capable to handle more than 2TB?

Thank you.

[zanzabar]

for more than 1.6tb u need to use a gpt instead of an mbr boot sector, so what u need to do (not that i know if the NV chipset dose this) if u want to install windows on it is make a smaller raid partition for windows then anouther for the rest then when u instalize that disk thats larger than 1.6TB u have to set it to gpt instead of mbr

[Marios]

Thank you. I used gpt already. This is why Vista reports one 3.6TB disk.
The disk is working OK. I have filled it up with 1TB already.
Not sure if I can write more than 2TB on this disk though.

In my case I get a boot - scaning the array - problem after having my PC off for many hours.
I have to turn the PC off and on and everything is OK.
This only happens when I connect the 2X2TB raid array.
I don't have this problem with less than 2TB arrays.

Any experience with any chipsets using raid-0 2X2TB?

[zanzabar]

ive used an lsi and an intel with more than 2TB raid arrays

[Marios]

This is nice. Which Intel chipset did you use?
I am trying to find the raid array limits of AMD, Nforce, and Intel chipsets, but no lack so far.

[Marios]

I never had problems with three 2X1TB raid-0 arrays for many years. I decided to replace four 1TB disks with three 2TB disks, (two Hitachi and one WD green). I created a 2X2TB raid-0 array in raid BIOS but it reported 1.6TB instead of 3.8TB. I suppose this is a raid BIOS error, not capable to see sizes over 2TB. Then I could not initialize the disks with my favorite fast but old time 9.99 drivers. I had to download the latest drivers to make Vista see the new 2TB hard disks. Then I chose to initialize the two Hitachi 2X2TB raid-0 disk with GUID partition table (GPT) and the WD green 2T jbod (one disk alone on the raid controller) with master boot record (MBR) partition style. This way I got one 2TB disk array (the original 2X1 raid-0 with the operating system), a 4TB disk array and one 2TB WD green jbod.
Though I am not sure yet whether I can fill the 4TB array. I have filled it up to 1.5TB by now without any problems. So instead of trying to check it myself the hard way I though someone might have similar experiences and could help me.

The problem I have is that when I turn off my PC overnight, the next day the raid BIOS cannot detect the array.
I have to turn off and on the PC. This way it works OK. Yesterday morning my PC recognized the array right away, but it took it 15 minutes to boot.
I checked the event viewer and there were many errors while trying to detect the WD green disk (the one in jbod).

So I replaced the WD green 2TB disk with my old 1TB disk in jbod. This way I get no more problems.
I don't know how to prove my WD Green is faulty though to get an RMA.

[safan80]

It sounds like an issue with the Nvidia raid bios. Have you enabled 64bit LBA support?

If you want to test your hard drive you can use this program:

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=3&lang=en