Areca 1880

[Nizzen]

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

Is it a ES or retail? X and not IX ? I looking forward to see some results

[Computurd]

yes it is x, and not IX. it is ES. they arent available publicly yet. I will test an IX as soon as they are ready as well they are awaiting a few components for its completion. i do have a bit of news on teh IX, but need to await confirmation on what i have read in the contained manual.

[Nizzen]

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.

LOL

I tested my 4x M4 128gb with 009 firmware, and Areca 1880ix-24 was not initializing.

The old firmware was ok with Areca.
Please help me

[Computurd]

hard to tell if you are being serious nizzen...

does it work or not? i need to see if my mobo will boot with both arecas then we could see some cool numbers

[Nizzen]

hard to tell if you are being serious nizzen...

does it work or not? i need to see if my mobo will boot with both arecas then we could see some cool numbers

I am very serious! m4 with 009 firmware is NOT working

[Computurd]

gah that is unfortunate. great thing about areca though is that they fix issues like this ASAP!!

[Razor_Blade]

Yep, Areca is on the case. The bought an m4 just to test and fix it.

For now, if you disconnect power from all of the drives, boot, get into the bios for the card, connect to the web gui with a second computer through the card's ethernet port, re plug in each ssd, one at a time, and check to see if the card is picking them up. When all of the drives are back and the raidset is normal, you can do a warm reset and it will boot. Some of the drives will have to be unplugged and plugged back in several times to be recognized. Clear as mud, right? I honestly have no idea how i figured it out...

[Wintel64]

Yep, Areca is on the case. The bought an m4 just to test and fix it.

For now, if you disconnect power from all of the drives, boot, get into the bios for the card, connect to the web gui with a second computer through the card's ethernet port, re plug in each ssd, one at a time, and check to see if the card is picking them up. When all of the drives are back and the raidset is normal, you can do a warm reset and it will boot. Some of the drives will have to be unplugged and plugged back in several times to be recognized. Clear as mud, right? I honestly have no idea how i figured it out...

Do you know when Areca will release a fixed firmware?

[Nizzen]

Before i saw this, I testet several things to get around the issue. I managed to hotswap one and one ssd and used f5 in http storagemanager. Then i got all m4 reconized. I set up all in raid-0. Benched, an got numbers from only one drive! Still all was set up in raid-0. I booted, and the array was found. Tested again, and still 510 MB/s read... Strange

[Razor_Blade]

Do you know when Areca will release a fixed firmware?

No clue, but i hope it will be this week. I would be suprised if it went longer than 2 weeks. Put the heat on them, send nice but serious emails to their support guy. He is very helpful, but they may not realize the scope of affected users. The more people that email them, the faster this issue will get resolved.

Before i saw this, I testet several things to get around the issue. I managed to hotswap one and one ssd and used f5 in http storagemanager. Then i got all m4 reconized. I set up all in raid-0. Benched, an got numbers from only one drive! Still all was set up in raid-0. I booted, and the array was found. Tested again, and still 510 MB/s read... Strange

That is weird. I get great performance from my array, even though it was created with the f/w bug. I initially set up the ssd array while booting from a second raid array. No idea why your performance is in the toilet.

[Nizzen]

I got it to work, but it does not work with cold-boot. Then it is useless for an OS array. That sux!
Cant f.. wait for a fix
Too bad it does not work properly, when the speed is excellent.

Well this is the first ever bug for me with the Areca 1880

[PnoT]

I just ordered the 1880 and (2) M4 128GB drives yesterday and stumbled across the last few pages in this thread... ugh.

Just to be clear the drives are not being detected and initialized so the RAID is not showing up online?

I'll be setting up RAID 0 for a Hyper-V test bed platform and wanted to know if there are any controller / strip size tips you guys could throw my way?

Thanks

[PnoT]

Thankfully my drives showed up with 0002 firmware so I'll stick with this until I hear more on a solution.

[PnoT]

Here is a response I got back from Areca on the 0009 firmware:

the problem seems related with the new SSD firmware and the SAS processor, we can not avoid this problem by our side.
the new firmware have problem when use 6G SAS hosts, we can reproduce same problem by LSI SAS HBA and raid cards. our marketing team will forward our analyze result to Crucial.


Best Regards,


Kevin Wang

Here are my initial results without any tweaking so far:

[Razor_Blade]

Official email from Areca:

Below is the test result from our engineer. You may report the problem to Crucial.

We bought one piece of Crucial M4 SSD and found the issue generated by M4 0009 firmware hang up when the LSI 2108 or 2208 ROC RAID or host adapter do the following action.
"We guess if SSD receive COMSAS primitive (SAS phy use it to verify if SAS device is connected), link will be lost short after link negotiated during SSD power on period.
If we let phy unconnected, and SSD powered up awhile, then, plug phy, SSD can be recognized."

It is very easy to duplicate the issue when it connects to LSI 6gb/s SAS expander.
User can 100% duplicate it by our ARC-1880ix-24 (it has installed 6gb/s SAS expander on controller).
User can duplicate it directly attach to LSI 2108 or 2208 ROC by hot plug the M4 SSD.
We also use the LSI host adapter to test it.
It also has the same issue.
Please request customer reported it to Crucial.
We can provide the LeCory SAS analyzer tarce to Crucial if Crucial needs it.

Best Regards,

Benjamin Jiang


Well, it sounds like I need to raise the alarm with Crucial now. I doubt they will be as quick to resolve it as Areca was. In the meanwhile, I bought an LSI 9265-8i to get it up and running. No expander, no issues. I will keep after this, for those that are still having issues. They replicated exactly what I figured out. You can get it to boot on 0009 M4 firmware, but not pretty.

[Computurd]

:Nice find, thanks for the update, lets bombard Crucial with Emails !!!

[Razor_Blade]

:Nice find, thanks for the update, lets bombard Crucial with Emails !!!

Less awesome news: The brand new shiny LSI 9265 won't boot with them either. Compu, did you get your 9265 to boot with the 1880 in at the same time? I can get the machine to boot when the drives are in the Areca, the LSI is on the MB, and with my hot swap trick. If the the LSI has the drives connected, the card doesn't see them, but makes it through BIOS. LMK if you have tested that config. It looks like the bug is affecting all LSI ROC's that are new. Thanks.

[Nizzen]

Hello Storagegeeks

Please send emails to Crucial about this problem! Maybe some of you with perfect English can make a thread on Crucial forums?
Then post a link here :p

It sux to have many M4s and not be able to use it on the Areca 1880. I have to use the IBM M1015
Thank you my friends!

edit; sorry, found the thread!
http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-S.../61109/page/29

[Anvil]

Is there no way to downgrade the firmware?

[Razor_Blade]

Not safely, from what I have read. I really wish I could, however...

[Razor_Blade]

Crucial was a huge pain in the ass on the phone. Guy basically told me: "screw you, don't use consumer SSD's with RAID cards. We don't have to support that." Pisses me off really bad, considering that I dropped $1400 on these things and they don't work, but would have if I hadn't updated the firmware. Slam them with emails, people. That is totally unacceptable. If we yell loud enough, they might fix it. If they don't they can count on me never buying a micron product again.

[Computurd]

this is distressing. VERY much so. There will be resolution to this, of that i am sure.

@ razor- i am unable to boot any multicard configs with my mobo, it is a POS. the E760 has an issue with an abnormally small amount of Option ROM. so this has been a long standing issue. I am waiting for SB-E to get off this board, but until then i am of no use for multi-card info. I suspect that your problem is similar, i see you are using a 759. They absolutely suck in that respect. the LSI cards wouldnt even work on these mobos for about six months becuase of this issue.
Big thing here, though.
LSI doesnt support consumer gear, but through the coordinated effort of many users here, and at other forums, and SLAMMING them with Emails and support calls, they did fix the issue for single cards to work on these mobos. \
hopefully, we can broker some sort of similar thing for this M4 issue!

[Razor_Blade]

I actually have a e760 now. That is in another rig. Compu, if you can get as many people as you can to email Crucial about the issue, it would help. My voice and time to use it online is limited, but you seem interconnected in more places. I will keep following Crucial in hopes that they resolve it. I sent another message to Areca and asked if there was anything they could do to get around the bug, since Crucial was being a PITA. He told me that he would ask the engineers. Not a guarantee that they can fix it, but at least they are trying.

[PnoT]

I've already posted in the Crucial forum about a week ago on this same issue but there's no responses yet on a fix.

[Razor_Blade]

Update from Crucial:

Hello Razor,

I have forwarded on the information. Currently I don’t have anything new to tell you. Our parent company that makes the SSD’s Micron Technology is aware of customer’s reporting issues so they have purchased the RAID card and they are currently conducting testing. When I get informed I will let you know.

Dan Norris
Crucial Technical Support

Thanks for all of the attention and emails everyone. It looks like we might get this resolved! Keep the pressure on them!