Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jmone]

I was bored so decided to upgrade my Main PC to Win8 as it had gone very well with the dedicated HTPC - http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=82267.0

I was more worried about this PC as it runs has all of our content on it and a heap of apps etc.  So far so good, though a couple of notes:

- MC:  It needed to be reinstalled (all OK)

- Drive Bender:  I have 8 x 4TB HDD on a Highpoint SAS/SATA card pooled using Drive Bender.  After the upgrade, the pool was not mounting so I had to uninstall DriveBender then Reinstall.  All OK (it picked up all the config and mapping just fine)

- NIC Card:  I was worried about this as during the install of Win8 it said I had to uninstall the driver for my Intel Dual Nic (I have them teamed in 1 x 2GB link).  The good thing is Win8 now supports teaming natively.  After the upgrade all I had to do was go into windows network setup, select both NICs and bridge them to one 2GB connection.  I then tested with the HTPC pulling from the Main PC while it was also playing Video Locally and doing a WHS Backup plus also syncing the media store to the backup server.  No issues with bandwidth contention, all played nice with no stuttering......  However while typing this I was checking my Win8 Bridging setup and got a hard crash "driver_irql_not_less_or_equal bridge.sys" .... In googling this it seems to be a common(ish) issue so this is one to keep an eye on!

- Dual Screens:  I was not expecting this, but you get the STD Desktop on the 2nd Screen and Metro on the Main one.

Rest seems OK so far but looking forward to Win8.1

[jmone]

Mmmm - Intel have released Win8 Drivers for their Dual Nic 1000PT cards so I removed the MS Bridge, installed the drivers then used the Intel config to Team them (Adaptive Load Balancing).  Gave them a flogging as above and then got a new BSOD - "DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION".... Guess I'll see how it goes in normal activity!

[jmone]

Soooo - turns out it is all going pear shaped!.  Given the errors I was getting, I decided to do a clean install.  This went well and no more issues with the BSOD's I was getting.  As it was a clean install I had to also reinstall the HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL SAS/SATA card drivers I use to give me an 8 additional SATA ports for my 8 4TB Hitachi drives.  These just appear in Windows Drive MGR as individual drives, no "RAID" and I use Drive Bender to then pool them.  It was all fine and going well but all of a sudden I started getting CHDDSK errors again (this has happened one before, all the cluster get "scrabled" between files).  To cut a long story short and after trying all sorts of things, I've pulled the HighPoint card out, but now I'm short some SATA drives (not helped that my PEX40062 (Marvell 88SE9235) seems to only have 3 of its four ports works). 

Looks like time for another card or MB with more std SATA ports.  In the interim I've created new partitions for each drive, created a new BD pool and will start the copy from the Backup Pool (will take about a week).  Nothing beats having a backup!

Now to find a good reliable 8 port SATA board - any suggestions?  No Raid!

[apgood]

The m1015 (IBM/LSI) is a good card. You just need to make sure you flash it with IT mode firmware. You can probably get one off of eBay for about $120. Is an 8 sata/sas port pcie 8 lane card.

[jmone]

Thanks - I'll give it a go.

[InflatableMouse]

Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
Intel RAID Controller SASUC8I

Check whether the slot they go in is compatible with yours, I think they are PCI-e. Both are 8 port SAS/SATA.

[jmone]

The m1015 (IBM/LSI) is a good card. You just need to make sure you flash it with IT mode firmware. You can probably get one off of eBay for about $120. Is an 8 sata/sas port pcie 8 lane card.

Got the card, flashed it to IT mode (was a bit more fun on UEFI bios) and so far so good, all just show up nicely as std HDD..... Only hitch so far is that the 8087-Sata cables that came with it were right angled and would not fit on my backplane due to the Molex Power being in the way.   New cables on order and then I'll see what throughput I get. 

[jmone]

Got the new cables and all working well.  Loving the simple IT firmware!  Thanks for the suggestion apgood!

[apgood]

You're welcome. Yeah I use one in my unraid server and it has been trouble free.

[jmone]

Out of interest, do you know if there is a version with more mini sas ports? eg support for 12 or 16 sata drives (without using an expander)?

[apgood]

No I don't but I imagine it would need to be a 16 lane pcie card to so there aren't any bandwidth constraints for fast hd's.  You could check over in the unraid forums I vaguely remember someone talking about 16 lane cards over there....