Areca ARC-1120 on FreeBSD 7.0

[Andrew Hotlab]

> Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:04:32 -0400
> To: andrew.hotlab at hotmail.com
> From: mike at sentex.net
> Subject: RE: Areca ARC-1120 on FreeBSD 7.0
> CC: freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org
> 
> At 12:13 PM 8/12/2008, Andrew Hotlab wrote:
>>last e-mail! :)  I can confirm that all works like a charm without 
>>the Areca card. So, where the problem might lie?!  I tested the card 
>>with both 7.0-STABLE and 8.0-CURRENT (it hangs even before) without
>>success... :(
> 
> Perhaps a disk option set on the Areca ? Looking at my config, I have 
> it set to
> SATA300+NCQ
> HDD Read Ahead Cache  enabled
> Stagger Power On Control 0..4
> Spin Down Idle HDD  disabled
> HDD SMART status polling enabled
> Disk Write Cache Mode enabled
> 
> Can you try booting without the drives, or with just a couple of 
> drives with a fresh raidset created ?  I wonder if the box is booting 
> up and is confused by the existing raidset ?
> 
>          ---Mike
> 

My card's options were slightly different from yours ("Stagger Power On Control" was set to "0..7" and
"Disk Write Cache Mode" was set to "Auto"). Even setting them as yours the 7.0R didn't boot.

I tried to boot without disks using the new firmware, but nothing changed! Then I created a new RAID0
set/volume using only a single SATA drive (it was used as online spare), but still not success... I'm afraid
to have ended any ideas about what it might be the cause of this trouble!! :(

I'll go on changing PCI-X slot of the Areca card, but I'm going to became pessimistic about a successful
end of this story... sigh!
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