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Post by ericbsmith on Oct 18, 2010 22:27:40 GMT -5
+1 what Tony said.
I haven't had to replace a failed drive yet, but I did have some experience with a drive dropping from an existing array and it causing the array to degrade during rebuild. Deleting the existing array and recreating it (with the same exact settings) always preserved the data; I'd imagine the same would happen if you replace the dead drive then recreate the RAID-3 array.
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Post by ericbsmith on Aug 23, 2010 6:13:25 GMT -5
I'm currently running two PNY Netcell cards in my server computer without issue. One has 5x1.5TB WD Blacks, the other 5x1.5TB WD Green drives. I had to disable the onboard RAID controller of the motherboard (dropping it to AHCI, and using Windows 7 Pro's software RAID-1) to deal with the compatibility problems between it and the Netcell cards, but I had no issues with the two cards themselves working together.
Both the WinXP RAID manager and DOS Firmware Updater will allow you to address each Netcell card individually. Each BIOS screen comes up in sequence, so you can easily configure or deal with each array.
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Post by ericbsmith on Aug 10, 2010 10:27:37 GMT -5
OK, I've answered a few of my own questions here. I finally broke down and bought 5x Western Digital 1.5TB Black WD1501FASS drives from ChiefValue.com (a Newegg sister company - they had free shipping and a $15 coupon). My server is dual-booting Windows 7 x64 Pro and Windows XP Pro x86. I booted into WinXP and had no trouble creating a single 6TB RAID-3 array using the App. I then booted into Win7 and formatted the array as a single GPT/NTFS partition of 5.45TB, and booted back into Win7. I then tried to perform long format; about an hour into it the RAID dropped a drive, which Win7 reported as a failing harddrive (at least it's good to know that Win7 correctly monitors the RAID array status). Starting over I repeated, but first I set the jumper on the drives to 1.5GB speed. Unfortunately, I got the same result, a dropped drive after about an hour. At this point I'm wondering if I'm going to get this working... Next I set all the drives to Spread Spectrum/3.0GB speed (couldn't find enough jumpers for both SS&1.5GB). Also, rather than using the WinXP tool I set the RAID-3 array up in the BIOS using the largest block size (256kb I believe; the WinXP utility it was automatically using the 128kb block size). This time I've had success. I've had it running for four days now without any issues, except that the write speeds are atrocious - I was getting from 20-50MB/s write speeds (it got faster as I got closer to the end of the drive). Filling the drive was a lot like trying to fill a bathtub through a straw, but I managed to completely fill the drive after a couple days of continuous copying. Read speeds are better, around 80MB/s, which is close to the maximum you'd expect from a PCI based card; my other RAID array with this card has 3x1TB WDBlacks and I manage to get 50-60MB/s writes and 90MB/s reads.
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Post by ericbsmith on Jul 20, 2010 17:43:45 GMT -5
What 1.5TB drives do you have running? I've really liked the Netcell cards, they're cheap, simple, and they work, but like all RAID cards they can be picky about what drives they work with and I would hate to drop over $500 for the harddrives only to find out they don't work with the Netcell card.
I've had one 3x1TB RAID running stable with WD Blacks for a couple years, and have been thinking about trying to put together two more RAID arrays. I just ordered several cards from an online dealer, but can't decide which harddrives to get. I've been looking at the 1.5TB WD Blacks, and I already have 5x1.5TB WD Greens I may try to turn into a new RAID after I get another RAID set up and running stable (that way I can empty the drives to wipe them to set up the new array).
I've also thought about expanding my 3x1TB into a 5x1TB, but can't find any solid information on whether or not MBR partitions will work; that is, whether or not I can simply place 2x2TB MBR partitions on the single 4TB array.
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