ACARD RAM Disk 9010 series

[Think]

Will there be an xtremesytems discount?

[Levish]

This is driverless, it should look just like a normal hard drive. Just a very, very fast one. The problem may be if the controller expects the speed of response of a normal hard drive and cannot cope somehow with information being returned orders of magnitude more quickly. SATA should be a generic interface, after all you don't usually need a new mobo BIOS with specific data to install a brand new hard drive... but there is obviously room for quirks given the occasional mobo incompatability.

Doesn't mean the device will work with raid adapters (or rather one over the others). If it does end up supporting major raid controllers this device can actually possibly find its way into enterprise use rather than being limited to "desktop enthusiasts" like ourselves.

Come to think about it, using 4GB sticks I would be fine with a single dual sata port model. ~32GB of storage and 400MB/s

I wonder if there will be another revision of the device with a better dram controller than can give closer to the full SATAII bandwidth per port in the works.

[IanB]

Doesn't mean the device will work with raid adapters (or rather one over the others). If it does end up supporting major raid controllers...

Huh? Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard?

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

[Levish]

Huh? Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard?

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

In theory you are right, in practice not all hard disks work well with all controllers and the other way around.

Thats why some storage systems are qualified to run with some hard drives and so on.

[Speederlander]

Huh? Do you ask if a new hard drive supports a specific RAID controller? The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability. Controllers don't need tables of data to speak to every different hard drive make and model, else they'd need to be software-updated every time a new one came out. Same for drives talking to controllers. Do you update drive firmware every time you plug an old drive into a brand new mainboard?

As long as they use a common subset of the available commands and don't do anything unexpected, there should be no problem linking any SATA device with any controller, short of a bug in the implementation somewhere. No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

No, I got the new Areca 1680ix-16 card, fairly high end, and it didn't support SSDs for boot until the third firmware revision. It handled them fine for a data drive, but wouldn't boot. "SATA standard" doesn't guarantee compatibility.

[Buckeye]

I am very much looking forward to these. As I have 4 spare SATA connectors on my ARC1231ML these units would be Great for that spot.

4x 9010 with full RAM load would be a great test against my 8x MTRON's

[IanB]

No explicit "support" is necessary on the drive side. The only issue I can see is that these things return data so fast to the controller that the firmware may not be set up to handle that. That requires support for SSDs on the controller side instead.

No, I got the new Areca 1680ix-16 card, fairly high end, and it didn't support SSDs for boot until the third firmware revision. It handled them fine for a data drive, but wouldn't boot.

Er, isn't that what I said? Levish's suggestion was that these drives should support specific controllers, not the other way around. If a specific controller can't use these drives, then they are not at fault, the controller card is.

[Speederlander]

Er, isn't that what I said? Levish's suggestion was that these drives should support specific controllers, not the other way around. If a specific controller can't use these drives, then they are not at fault, the controller card is.

Actually, no, that's not what you said. Both the controller AND the drive can be at fault when things don't work. There's more going on than just meeting the SATA standard. The WD 640GB harddrives that came out several months ago also had issues with several controllers. That turned out specifically to be a harddrive firmware issue from WD. But whatever, what people want to know is if the drives will work with the major controllers. Doesn't matter who didn't support who (controller or drive), doesn't work = doesn't work. That's why we need the tests and being a first time buyer is to be a beta tester in this case.

[IanB]

What we are disagreeing on is the word "support". Having a bug in the firmware doesn't mean drives don't "support" some controllers. It means the drives had a bug, that will affect multiple controller hosts.

"Support" implies special firmware code or handling for specific hardware. In your Areca example that's clearly what they fixed to allow booting from SSDs. So you proved my point, that controllers need to support specific drives, not the other way around.

Since the 9010 series has a SATA1 compatability mode, I think we can assume that ACARD are interested in making the thing as widely compatible as possible, otherwise they wouldn't be getting that many sales of what is already a niche product...

[Speederlander]

What we are disagreeing on is the word "support". Having a bug in the firmware doesn't mean drives don't "support" some controllers. It means the drives had a bug, that will affect multiple controller hosts.

"Support" implies special firmware code or handling for specific hardware. In your Areca example that's clearly what they fixed to allow booting from SSDs. So you proved my point, that controllers need to support specific drives, not the other way around.

Since the 9010 series has a SATA1 compatability mode, I think we can assume that ACARD are interested in making the thing as widely compatible as possible, otherwise they wouldn't be getting that many sales of what is already a niche product...

The WD 640s had issues. This ACARD may have issues. The new Arecas had issues with some drives, just like they may have with these. My point is, just because these things are sata means squat. While I certainly appreciate a good argument degenerating into semantics, in this case it's pointless. All that matters is that major controllers will play well with it. Problems could exist on either the controller or the ACARD side. That was the only point. Without results we don't know.

You earlier said:

The SATA standard should be plug and play, as long as the controller and drive speak the same dialect there shouldn't ever be any incompatability.

As though as long as ACARD is SATA it will be problem free. In reality that's simply not the case. "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility" is a pretty absolute statement considering I have seen many incompatibilities on many different drives between many different controllers.

[Eternalightwith]

so when are these going to hit retail? I found two on ebay. Gosh I hope they are cheaper than that.

[Think]

so when are these going to hit retail? I found two on ebay. Gosh I hope they are cheaper than that.

No and those are the less expensive versions. I think the others are around $400

ANS-9010
5.25 inch SATA x 2-to-DDRII RAM Disk
(RAM module not including)
more information
Price:USD399.00 Pre-Order

http://www.acard.com/english/fb01-batcar.jsp#

The 9010B are $299

[josh1980]

Hello guys. Here's my first post:

I have a 9010(8 slot) box with 16GB of ram in it, probably 32GB tomorrow. I'd be more than glad to run some benchmarks. Any requests on what programs to use or benchmarks to perform? I'm doing some tests with HD Tach and PCMark05 and I'll post results tomorrrow.

[IanB]

In reality that's simply not the case. "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility" is a pretty absolute statement considering I have seen many incompatibilities on many different drives between many different controllers.

If you're going to nitpick aggressively about my phrasing, I prefer the obvious stress intended when I wrote it: "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility". I believe that was the sense of my argument. If there IS incompatability with a particular drive or controller, it's clearly a bug, it's not a case of "support" or no "support".

[Speederlander]

If you're going to nitpick aggressively about my phrasing, I prefer the obvious stress intended when I wrote it: "Shouldn't ever be any incompatibility". I believe that was the sense of my argument. If there IS incompatability with a particular drive or controller, it's clearly a bug, it's not a case of "support" or no "support".

Heh, I felt you were nitpicking mine. I don't care if it's due to bad support or no support or a bug or a calculated choice, either it works or it doesn't. There is a better than vanishing chance that it may have troubles, which ever side those troubles might come from. My original point was the sata standard it follows won't matter. Theoretically, sure, if both sides perfectly implement it would be peachy, but practical experience has proven time and time again that both controller manufacturers and hard drive manufacturers will find a way for something not to work, either by mistake or omission. Hence, I want to see the results of reviewers trying this thing on some controllers before I spend hundreds of dollars to beta test it.

[B.E.E.F.]

Hello guys. Here's my first post:

I have a 9010(8 slot) box with 16GB of ram in it, probably 32GB tomorrow. I'd be more than glad to run some benchmarks. Any requests on what programs to use or benchmarks to perform? I'm doing some tests with HD Tach and PCMark05 and I'll post results tomorrrow.

Those are good. Can you also post same results of the box running in RAID vs single connector?

[tiro_uspsss]

cant remember if this has been asked: can u use diff capacity DIMMs?

[wmaciv]

Will the ANS-9010 work with 512x64 HD memory on 4gb sticks? My I-RAM works fine with the cheaper, high density modules. That would make it a lot nicer trying to populate this thing with enough memory to make it usefull.

[josh1980]

So here's the long story on the troubles I've been going through.

The manual that comes with it says the following:

The ANS-9010/9010B supports both ECC and none ECC DR SDRAM DIMM. However, it is strongly recommended to use ECC DDR SDRAM DIMM to ensure data integrity. ANS9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC registered DDR-2 memory. Users can obtain full capacity when ECC registered memories are used.

The manual for download at the Acard website says:

The ANS-9010 supports both ECC and Non-ECC DDR2 SDRAM DIMM. It does not support Buffered nor Registered DDR2 SDRAM DIMM.

The bad English is copied from the manual. It reads like it was written in Japanese and then quickly translated to English. I can't figure out if it means to say you need registered memory from my manual or not. First it says you can't use it, then it says you can. ECC does not mean it's Registered. I called Acard about this, and the guy barely speaks English. He couldn't really tell me much of anything I didn't figure out on my own after almost 7 hours of troubleshooting this thing. Needless, don't try to call them for help. Your dog/cat can probably help out more than they can.


I was unable to get my 8 4GB sticks of ram to work. The ANS-9010 does NOT work with cheaper high density modules. Took only 7 hours of troubleshooting and 3 phone calls to finally prove that I'm screwed and I'll have to return the memory I just got in the mail. Putting the ones I bought in cause completely unexplainable results. Errors both on reads and writes, and crazy crazy memory sizes like 15.462GB when there was 32GB of RAM installed. So no, don't try the high density modules or you'll be doing a big fat return for lots of $$$ like I am doing today.

I tested both DDR2-533 and DDR2-800 memory sticks. Both performed to within 2%. I think the 2% is within the tolerance of the test. I will be buying whatever is cheaper this weekend :P.

You can populate any size stick in any slots. Choose any combination of sizes and fill whatever slots you feel like filling, it all works the same.

Before I give the results, I would like to mention that using PCMARK and h2benchw would max out one of my cores(I have a q6600) for the tests, so these may be CPU limited.

Here's the Benchmark results:

Single Port tests
----------------

HD Tach -

Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization:3%
Average Read: 167.8 MB/sec
Average Write: 140.3 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 171.9MB/sec
The graph was perfectly horizontal, as expected.

h2benchw -

Interface transfer rate w/ block size 128 sectors at 0.0% of capacity:
Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 124.747MB/sec
Application Loading: 109.865MB/sec
General Usage: 81.776MB/sec
Virus Scan - 102.181MB/sec
File Write - 119.448MB/sec

Next I ran benchmarks using the 2 port operation. I couldn't use RAID mode because the C drive is not RAID, so the drive would not be bootable. Software RAID0 was used to perform the tests. HD Tach cannot test software RAIDs.

First I ran benchmarks on the 2 "drives" simultaneously to see what would happen. Most people would choose to test them sequentially. When run simultaneously, each drive shows the full performance of single port mode. This would hint that when I set them up as a RAID, the performance will approximately double. That is actually not the case.

Results for RAID0 software:

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 184.984MB/sec
Application Loading: 101.014MB/sec
General Usage: 106.912MB/sec
Virus Scan - 129.055MB/sec
File Write - 143.953MB/sec

h2benchw -

Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 157501 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.45 ms): 149527 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 157399 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 131372 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.54 ms): 125681 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 129962 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 159140.5, min 82580.7, max 166318.5 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 124803.8, min 61775.2, max 138881.6 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.07 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.03, max 0.08 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.07 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec

As you can see, some benchmarks changed, others did not.

Next I decided to plug the ANS-9010 into my RAID controller. I used a Highpoint Technology 2320 PCI-Express card to perform the tests.

RAID0 using hardware:

HD Tach -

Random Access: 0.1ms
CPU Utilization: 3%
Average Read: 222.9MB/sec
Average Write: 183.6 MB/sec
Burst Speed: 325.5MB/sec
The graph looks like waves from an ocean. See the attachment HDTACH.jpg to see for yourself.

PCMark05 -

XP Startup - 217.013MB/sec
Application Loading: 143.856MB/sec
General Usage: 150.068MB/sec
Virus Scan - 196.521MB/sec
File Write - 170.235MB/sec

h2benchw -

Sequential read rate medium (w/out delay): 166471 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate w/ read-ahead (delay: 0.42 ms): 166272 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential read ("core test"): 166620 KByte/s
Sequential write rate medium (w/out delay): 138353 KByte/s
Sequential transfer rate write cache (delay: 0.51 ms): 138472 KByte/s
Repetitive sequential write: 138405 KByte/s

Sustained transfer rate (block size: 128 sectors):
Reading: average 167238.2, min 166625.9, max 167782.4 [KByte/s]
Writing: average 138959.6, min 138269.7, max 139480.7 [KByte/s]

Random access read: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.10 [ms]
Random access write: average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.09 [ms]
Random access read (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.12 [ms]
Random access write (<504 MByte): average 0.05, min 0.04, max 0.11 [ms]

Zone measurements for read rates were all about 166MB/sec
Zone measurements for write rates were all about 138MB/sec

As you can see, some benchmarks changed alot, some didn't change at all. PCMARK05 seems to have increased in all tests by using the RAID card. This makes me wonder if there is some kind of bottleneck when using my onboard controller. I'm thinking the SATA controller has a 1x PCIe lane to the southbridge, which is probably nearing saturation when I run RAID0. Strangely this doesn't show itself when I benchmarked the 2 drives independently

Overall, this thing is crazy fast. I don't care what others say, this thing is wicked fast. Most people here will admit that if you tried to copy 7000 little files totaling less than 500MB, it would take a while because of the number of files, not the actual size of data. I extracted about 7000 files totaling about 500MB from a .7z file using maximum compression to the drive in less than 10 seconds. I then duplicated the data on the drive in less than 10 seconds. I don't know anyone that has copied 7000 files in 10 seconds, let alone even 1 minute. I'm impressed!

I don't know if this box can use registered memory or not, but I am going to find out. ECC memory is cheaper online if it's also Registered, so I'm looking for the cheapest solution to fill this drive with 4GB sticks.

Also, the drive name in the BIOS will clue you in on what this drive is doing. If you look at BIOSPICT.jpg, you'll see how it works.

Each "field" is separated by an underscore.

The ANS9010 is the model.
The first 0 is the port. If you use the dual port mode, the first drive is 0, the second drive is 1.
The last one is the slots used. In my pict slots 0 and 1 were populated. The *'s indicate empty slots.

Also, for anyone playing around, here's the slot numbers for the slots from left to right when the front of the box faces you:

7,5,6,4 <Center> 0,2,1,3

I'll let everyone know how the Registered memory works and hopefully we can all find a cheap supplier for 4GB sticks.

Let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

[wmaciv]

Josh, I would certainly like to see the results with an onboard chipset in RAID mode if you get around to it. I have an ANS-9010 due in the mail Monday; glad I waited on the RAM purchase. I currently have an old Platypus QikDrive8 and two Gigabyte I-RAM Box style drives on my system, and the ACARD looks like the Holy Grail....

Wade

[josh1980]

Ok, I can confirm that Registered memory does NOT work. I also investigated buying registered memory and removing the register chip, but that won't work either. Looks like we're stick buying either 2GB sticks on the cheap, or 4GB sticks at about $110 or so each . Anyone else know of any place that sells 4GB memory sticks that are unregistered and low density for less than $100 a stick?

I'll see about getting that done for you today wmaciv.

Just for giggles, I tried using one of those SATA to USB converters and benchmarked the box. I get a cool, crisp 30MB/sec. WOOHOO! ROFL. I did this to see what the actual maximum speed for USB2 is because USB2 wasn't designed for transferring data like is commonly used for thumbdrives and memory sticks.

Also, on my box is a sticker that tells you what all the jumper settings are. There is only 3 on the chart(there's 5 jumpers). But 1 of the 3 jumper descriptions is covered with a sticker that says "RESERVED". If you put a jumper in that location, it disables the ECC feature that takes non-ECC memory and makes it ECC. You lose 1/9 of your RAM size for this ECC feature. I think that they chose to not show this feature because of some kind of problem they had requiring the ECC feature to work.

[B.E.E.F.]

Wow great results.

I read the device has enough battery to back up its contents on a CF card. Have you also tested this? Do you have more info on this feature?

[josh1980]

I haven't bought a CF card for it, but the battery lasted about 2.5 hours when I tested it after leaving it to charge overnight.. that should be plenty of time to back up to CF.

[IanB]

Also, on my box is a sticker that tells you what all the jumper settings are. There is only 3 on the chart(there's 5 jumpers). But 1 of the 3 jumper descriptions is covered with a sticker that says "RESERVED". If you put a jumper in that location, it disables the ECC feature that takes non-ECC memory and makes it ECC. You lose 1/9 of your RAM size for this ECC feature. I think that they chose to not show this feature because of some kind of problem they had requiring the ECC feature to work.

Sorry, can you clarify that, as it seems you are contradicting yourself...

Are you saying the quasi-ECC feature with non-ECC memory IS working and the jumper to DISable it doesn't work, or that the quasi-ECC feature ISN'T working and the jumper to enable it doesn't work?

[josh1980]

Sorry, it does sound confusing. The normal operation for non-ECC memory is to enable the quasi-ECC feature. This feature uses 1/9th of the total size of the memory, so whatever size you have installed you will lose 1/9th. If you put a jumper over the "RESERVED" jumper, which is the second jumper from the right when looking at it, this disables the quasi-ECC feature giving you the total capacity of the RAM sticks. I have a copy of their manual from 2 months ago, and it did have a feature to disable the quasi-ECC feature, but they strongly recommended you use it. I disabled it and ran read/write tests all night with no problems.

I would still recommend you not use a jumper there since they seem to have intentionally wanted to remove the 'feature' by not explaining the jumper in the manual.

I just had to know what was the purpose of the jumper since they deliberately covered up the sticker on the case for the jumper configuration.