Cannot create consistent array

[ninjagull]

Hi hope somebody can help.

After lots of research on building my own NAS for home use I invested in an Intel D510 board, 5 Western Caviar WD5000AADS drives and two netcell SR5000 (one for backup) and built then into an old PAckard Bell case with new 405 watt PSU.

I am using 4GB (industrial) CF card on SATA converter plugged into to motherboard on which I have the FreeNAS operating system.

The 5 500Gb drives (all jumpered to 1.5Mb transfer rate) are all plugged into the Netcell card.

Have now tried both Netcell cards and updated to latest firmware 1.7.6.1. When I first boot and use Ctl-N for BIOS setup of card on of the drives comes up as 'U' Unassigned. Other 4 are part of Raid 3 array.

I then delete array leaving all drives Unassigned. Then create new 5 drive array (0) and Array A0 shows 5 drive-Raid 3 good.

Then do save and exit and then shutdown and then start system.
More often than not the same drive keeps coming up as unassigned, partial array or fault.

I have plugged the drive into seperate PC and tested it and it seems OK.

I have tried new data and power cables. If I plug drive into a different port the fault moves with the dive onto that port.

I think I read somewhere that 750Gb Western digital drives did not work with this card?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Many thanks

[The Coyote]

I'd say the your power supply is a bit short. would go to 750-1000 watt unit.

[supercharged22re]

I am having the same issues as ninjagull, with mine. I'm running RAID1 on 2 SATA II drives, with a 950W PS. I have had a hair ripping experience with this thing, and I think I'm done with it. The firmware update made no difference. Almost all options in Windows are grayed out with the software provided, which makes it just about useless. Every time I install an OS on it, and start running updates, it tells me a drive needs to be replaced, or has a fault, and when I check the drives on my other server, they always test fine.

I just ordered a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card, (since my motherboard is also Supermicro P3TDE6-G), in the hopes that it will play much nicer.