High Point Rocket 640L


Recommended Posts

I can't get this to work, and I think I might know why.  It seems that there are 2 High Point Rocket 640L cards.

 

This one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115118

And this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115114

 

I have the 2nd one, and I think the card specified in your script is the first one?  Am I right on that?  So I need to know how to add the 2nd card's pci id into the script.  How do I find that?  Did a little googling and found something called lspci that might be the correct thing to use, but I'm not sure how to make it work in unraid. 

 

What would the proper syntax be for modifying the script if I do find the pci_id?  Thanks in advance. 

Link to comment
  • 9 months later...

This card is detect by unRaid (v5.0) and SATA Controller enabler script, works perfectly with 1 drive ( WDC_WD1502 ), but when comes the time to plug more drive, it fail ...

 

Lots of data corruption, controler Timeout .... need to unpluggued and return to vendor ..

 

Now use an 'old' Adaptec 1420SA, and all my additionnal drives works fine !

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

This card is detect by unRaid (v5.0) and SATA Controller enabler script, works perfectly with 1 drive ( WDC_WD1502 ), but when comes the time to plug more drive, it fail ...

 

Lots of data corruption, controler Timeout .... need to unpluggued and return to vendor ..

 

 

In what situations did you encounter data corruption and controller timeouts?

 

I'm using a Rocket 640L on 5rc11 (no enabler script though), and am in the process of adding my second drive to it. The second drive is currently pre-clearing and I've run a parity check at the same time to stress the system a bit. So far nothing bad reported in the system log, and no parity errors found. Still waiting for the pre-clear results, and I guess simultaneous writes to both drives on the 640L remain to test as well.

 

EDIT: Two drives worked perfectly. Pre-clearing the third drive brought down the system, catastrophic failure. And perfectly reproducible. Two drives fine, three drives disaster. Controller card disappears under load.

Link to comment
  • 3 months later...

Did anyone ever get this controller to work reliably?

 

I have one of these controllers with 4 drives attached. Seemed to work fine at first (didn't negatively affect boot times, HDD's were available in unraid), but I've since noticed that whenever something resource intensive occurs (like a parity check), the drives go offline and a reboot is needed.

 

Took a while to narrow down, as it is a new build with a mix of new and second-hand hardware, so I had to rule out cables/RAM/PS/etc before I got to this conclusion (and can now reproduce on demand...)

 

Strange thing is though, that direct writes to the array (user shares and to disks attached to this controller) also cause the behaviour a few minutes into the transfer, however I noticed the other day that if I write to the cache disk and then let the mover script write to the array, then it doesn't seem to happen... perhaps because it's related to my next point in conjunction with high-water:

 

As for why two disks work - may have something to do with the card having two Marvell chips. A saw a few reviews that said that performance/throughput was excellent when one drive was attached to each chip, but dropped greatly whenever there was two drives using one chip. The card may yet be useful in this configuration, but I bought it because I needed another 4 ports, not 2...

 

I was planning to update the firmware of the card as soon as I get a chance, but not holding my breath at this point. Has anyone else done this, and did it help?

 

Should we be updating the official hardware list with info about this card?

 

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Mine says V1.0 and uses a Marvell 88SE9230. It is also screen printed with both "Rocket 640L" and "RocketRAID 640L" (see pic) which is interesting... the box just says Rocket. The difference seems to be support for RAID 0/1 vs 0/1/5/10/JBOD, and I have seen suggestions elsewhere that the RocketRAID 640L actually uses a 88SE9235. If true, then I do indeed have a Rocket 640L.

 

Highpoint website suggests that there is now a "2nd Gen" version of the card (however is only ever referred to as "RocketRAID"), and which is again reported to use a Marvell 88SE9235.

 

I note in some of the links in your sig that you are/were using a RR620 (not a 640) with a patched kernel and script to enable support for Marvell 88SE9128, however my 640L uses a Marvell 88SE9230

 

Would be good to know what card, version and chip you have, as well as how many drives/which ports you are using!

 

RR640L-b.jpg.a2dd8b3ba076e0ba29df322a9cfc690f.jpg

Link to comment

Came across another unraid user with problems: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=24646.0

 

And I just read some comments elsewhere that users have needed to disable some on-board Marvell based SATA controllers to get this (PCI-x Marvell based SATA controller) to work... which typically means losing 2x SATA ports.

 

I suspect this is the case for the above link (an old post I didn't want to dig up by replying to).

Link to comment

It appears there is a bug that keeps this card and any other Marvell 88SE923X based card from working properly in Linux.  It is likely that there is some AHCI implementation weirdness on Marvell's part that is triggering bad behavior in the AHCI driver, causing the controller to freak out under load and a SMART command being issued.

 

Stay away, as it doesn't look likely that this will be fixed in the kernel anytime soon.

 

My RocketRAID 640 card does not use one of these chips -- there are two 9128 chips onboard instead.

Link to comment
  • 2 years later...

I am looking for a SATA extension card and came across the High Point Rocket 640L.

 

Actually I was looking for the normal 640 model but this is not available anymore. The 640L however is available for quite a decent price.

 

As it is not in the list I am not sure if this is nowadays working with unraid 6.x or if I still should avoid that.

 

 

Link to comment

I am looking for a SATA extension card and came across the High Point Rocket 640L.

 

Actually I was looking for the normal 640 model but this is not available anymore. The 640L however is available for quite a decent price.

 

As it is not in the list I am not sure if this is nowadays working with unraid 6.x or if I still should avoid that.

 

I still have my 640L in a box somewhere, but I would never ever consider putting it back in any of my unRAID boxes.

 

Seriously, we're talking about ancient budget cards that have caused catastrophic failure for multiple users... Are there no other options?

Link to comment

Hi,

 

okay, noted. Then I would highly appreciate if you could help me to find an actual one, please?

The list in the Wiki is not helpful to me.

 

I am looking for a card offering 4 sata III 6gb/s. Price is should not exceed 200€. And I do not want to flash anything (because I do not know how to do that). So I would like something working out of the box. My rig is running at 6.1.6.

 

All I can find is either oop or 400€, which exceeds my budget.

 

EDIT: Just found the Highpoint Rocket 2720SGL. What about that? Forum posts say that this is plug-n-play and I could not find anything negative on the forum.

 

 

Link to comment

Hi,

 

thanks for the positive feedback. Just to be sure I have another question. There are two versions of the 2720SGL out there. One is named Rocket, which offers 8 additional SATA ports.

 

The other one is called RocketRaid and offeres 8 additional SATA ports and RAID functionalities. As we do not need the raid stuff for unraid I assume I could go with the normal Rocket version, right?

Link to comment
  • 2 years later...

Hi,

 

Ive just installed a Rocket 640L and two new Toshiba x300 4TB with one old Toshiba x300 4TB. The old one seems to be ok but the new ones are throwing some issues.

 

Lots of write errors etc. I cant use the onboard Sata controller as it only supports 2TB max, hence the purchase of the 640L.

 

The drives are detected and setup of array is fine but shortly after it will start to fall over.

 

Do i need to run this script?

 

Ive attached my logs.

 

Thanks,

N1ckeh

 

nt3ch-unraid-diagnostics-20180324-1656.zip

Edited by N1ckeh
logs
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.