Areca 1880

[Computurd]

do you have BBU? this is a common BBU issue.

fix:
1.remove BBU. remove card from machine. reboot rig without card. might even do a clear CMOS if it is needed, but probably not tbh.
2. leave BBU off, then restart machine with card on. a few times if neccessary.
this almost always clears the issue.

it is a bug that is apparently kept "alive" buy the BBU in the ram of the card. the controller uses the ram for its function as well, and with improper shutdown the BBU is keeping the ram alive, and thusly the bug as well. so the BBU is working fine at least LOL

[billdavis]

no BBU unfortunatly

I've tried diffrent mobo's with no joy.

[Computurd]

dang it. man without the firmware loading there isnt a lot you can do. Have you done any flashing lately or anything? i dont know where to go with this really unless maybe you accidentally put a mac FW bootrom on there. i did that once. other than that i have squat. Does the firmware timer go all the way to 300 before it resets? where exactly in the boot process does it stop?

[Wintel64]

Anyone can upgrade ARC-1880 firmware with ArcHTTP v1.85 in IE8 (Win7 32bit)?

I am trying to upgrade firmware through Web-browser but get a "HTTP protocol error" and can't successful.

[Computurd]

yes you should be able to do it easily. sometimes you will have to adjust the settings because it is a intranet connection, so the firewall/AV might get in the way. change your intranet settings in the browser options, then give it a whirl

[billdavis]

dang it. man without the firmware loading there isnt a lot you can do. Have you done any flashing lately or anything? i dont know where to go with this really unless maybe you accidentally put a mac FW bootrom on there. i did that once. other than that i have squat. Does the firmware timer go all the way to 300 before it resets? where exactly in the boot process does it stop?

I did the latest firmware jsut before it died. it went to 300 seconds.
no other changes than firmware for the computer from the last few months

[Monolyth]

Hey everyone,

I recently had an issue where I was taking an array off of my 1880ix-16 and for some reason it seems to have left a bunch of "extra" devices in the enclosure list (see attached ss). I deleted the raidset before taking it off, but it doesn't appear to have removed the device entries. The small RAID0 array & drive on there now are just for some clean-up before I transition another array to this card.

The previous array was a RAID6 with 12-3TB Hitachi's in there, RAID was fine no issues just moving it to a bigger beasty.

Has anyone noticed this behavior before? Thanks.

Specs:
1880ix-16 (4GB cache)
BBU is connected

[Monolyth]

Figured it out, just needed to attach another drive to one of the unused connectors and it reset the list.

[Computurd]

interesting, thanks for posting

[Razor_Blade]

Need to upgrade the on-board expander firmware also?

ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/BIO...xpander/100923 1.03 B3/

Same question here. I upgraded the card using the 4 files that come with the firmware download, do I need to flash the expander as well? I have been having a hard time getting this thing to consistently boot. When it won't boot, I can fix it by shutting down, unplugging the drives from the card on by one, powering up, then reconnecting the drives while running (!). This thing is driving me nuts. Computurd, I have a similar setup to you: 950 i7, EVGA Classified, 2 480 GTX in sli, Areca 1880ix-12, and 7 128GB M4 Crucial drives.

[odditory]

There's no separate firmware for the integrated expander. Do you have any disks besides the M4's connected to the card? Example I have issues w/ Areca's boot-time firmware init timing out if I have specific WD drives connected to an HP expander (which in turn connects to my 1880i). Give as much detail about your system as possible.

[Razor_Blade]

There's no separate firmware for the integrated expander. Do you have any disks besides the M4's connected to the card? Example I have issues w/ Areca's boot-time firmware init timing out if I have specific WD drives connected to an HP expander (which in turn connects to my 1880i). Give as much detail about your system as possible.

No other disks attached to the Areca. I have some Velociraptors attached to the ICH10R, in RAID 0. I have been trying to restore an image from them to the Areca SSD array. I swear it only boots about half of the time. The system is overclocked, but not the PCI-e bus. IT is very stable, other than the card. I am on the e760 version 77 bios release for my classified. I am honestly at a loss as to what I should do next, other than buy an LSI 9265...

[Computurd]

you certainly have some issue. I would suggest a number of things, some of which i outlined in pm (YHPM btw LOL)
under PnP/PCI configurations in your e760 bios, set the "reset configuration data" value to enabled.
give that a shot. do you have other raid cards installed? only the two 480s??

oh yeah this isnt in PM:

freq voltage control/ memory feature/ change memory low gap to either Auto or 3G. this controls the amount of memory to the PCIe slots, so this is probably your issue. the more PCie devices you have, the more memory low gap you need

[Razor_Blade]

you certainly have some issue. I would suggest a number of things, some of which i outlined in pm (YHPM btw LOL)
under PnP/PCI configurations in your e760 bios, set the "reset configuration data" value to enabled.
give that a shot. do you have other raid cards installed? only the two 480s??

oh yeah this isnt in PM:

freq voltage control/ memory feature/ change memory low gap to either Auto or 3G. this controls the amount of memory to the PCIe slots, so this is probably your issue. the more PCie devices you have, the more memory low gap you need

No other cards in the system, just 2 480gtx and the areca. What classified bios version are you on? I did a reset on the pci config data and changed the low gap to 3G. It is strange, it will time out on waiting for the firmware to become availiable every time, but not if there aren't drives connected. Is it safe to go backwards on firmware on the Areca? I would like to try an earlier release. Maybe the extra GB of Vmem makes all of the difference...

[Computurd]

im on the latest bios, so not sure there...yhmm lemme think on it. The firmware on the raid card times out?
the only time that i have had problems with the firmware timing out are when
A: i was testing different ram sticks (Bunch of them) to find ones that work. bad ones timed out
B: There *used* to be a BBU bug, where the BBU actually holds a bad load in the memory.

do you have a BBU? if so disconnect and try...

i assume that you have unplugged comp, reset cmos, shorted the pins?

try putting your raid card in PCIe slot #1 and then booting. put gpu in #2 it will still boot.

I know of no issues going backwards with FW, but you might need to get verification on that one, dont wanna be responsible for any issues. interesting issue here.

EDIT: the more i think on this the more i think it is memory. Do you have another stick? happen to be using a new one on the controller? do you have access to a machine you can test the ram stick on (memtest, etc?)
can you try booting without the ram on there? just tossing out ideas i admit it
try reseating the ram?

[Razor_Blade]

Ram is where I am leaning to as well. I don't have anymore machines I can test DDR2 on anymore. The stick I have in it came with it. No spares, unfortunately. Well, Maybe I will contact Areca and talk to them about it. It is just really strange that I can get the f/w to load with the card in, but only if I disconnect all of the drives on it.

I have taken this thing in and out of my machine 5 times now, and I have to drain/disassemble my entire loop to do it. I might try this card in another machine just to verify that it is the card, not the motherboard. Let me know on the bios version that you are using. Thanks again.

[Razor_Blade]

Sweet, I got the Satan post!!! ^^^

[Computurd]

I am on 82.

[Razor_Blade]

Bios 83 and turning the Mobo Sata ports from Raid to IDE did the trick. Not sure why, but I am up. Thanks again Everyone!

[Computurd]

lol i didnt even think of that....but this is fairly common on some boards.

[Razor_Blade]

Crap, I spoke too soon. It worked for about three boots, then it wouldn't start up again. I am going to pull the card again and try it in another computer. If it exhibits the same behavior in another computer, back to Areca it goes! Otherwise, I think I might be buying a new motherboard... any suggestions? It needs 3 PCI-e 16x slots minimum, 1366 socket. Should I wait for LGA 2011?

[Computurd]

personally i am waiting for SB-E or bulldozer..whichever shakes out as the best. Sorry to hear of the recurring issue...this is hard to figure, and looks to be hardware on either side of the connector, but hard to tell which until you test with dissimilar mobo.

[Razor_Blade]

I am working with Areca on this one now, they think it is either an issue with the card itself, or an incompatibility in between the M4's with the latest firmware and the card. The latter will be a fix, the former will be a replacement card. I will update the thread as I fix it, for reference.

[Computurd]

I will be very interested to hear of the results! I actually have a 1882x setting on my desk right now gonna fire it up

[Razor_Blade]

I will be very interested to hear of the results! I actually have a 1882x setting on my desk right now gonna fire it up

You may want to hold off on flashing m4s to the 0009 firmware. Areca just got back to me saying that the new firmware on marvell sata3 ssd's will prevent an 1880 from initializing. I THINK they are working on a fix, but no eta. Sucks to be me! I upgraded all 7 of mine and i am pretty sure the firmware flash is a one way street. I can get it to boot, but the process is insane. If anyone is stuck in my spot, pm me and i will walk you through it.