Adaptec 1430SA

[fatal]

Before I hit the "BUY" button, just wanted to ask some questions about this card.

 

Does this card need any firmware update to work with unraid?

Would I have to disable the onboard bios on this card? If so, I guess i'm going to have to plug in a monitor/keyboard to my unraid box?

It should be basically plug and play? I currently have a PCI card, so just plugging those drives into this card and then assigning them back to the correct slots should be fine right? Would it require a new parity build?

 

Thanks

[BryantD]

Before I hit the "BUY" button, just wanted to ask some questions about this card.

 

Does this card need any firmware update to work with unraid?

Would I have to disable the onboard bios on this card? If so, I guess i'm going to have to plug in a monitor/keyboard to my unraid box?

It should be basically plug and play? I currently have a PCI card, so just plugging those drives into this card and then assigning them back to the correct slots should be fine right? Would it require a new parity build?

 

Thanks

 

I have 2 of these cards. I disabled the bios of each card (would not boot unless I did). I had to plug in a monitor & keyboard to do this. Just plug in your drives and assign back to correct slots and you are good to go. It should not require a new parity build.

[fatal]

thanks

[fatal]

just installed it, disabled the bios, and it booted up fine

my parity build/check speed is up to 70MB/sec!

 

I also installed 4GB more ram (5gb total now), but in bios, it said usable was only 3.5, is there a reason for that? Is there way to check how much ram is being used/available to unraid?

EDIT: typed "free -m" in telnet, said i had total of 4.5GB ram...does that seem right?

 

Another thing i notice, the boot time has increased (im guessing b/c of the initialization of the hdds on the new controller) and the script for setra 2048 doesn't have any effect, as my read ahead speed was still set to 256...do i need to increase the sleep amount now?

EDIT: this seems to be fine now, must have been the first boot after installing the new hdd controller

 

Also, 4.4.2 has made everything a lot speedier!

 

Thanks

 

 

[WeeboTech]

I also installed 4GB more ram (5gb total now), but in bios, it said usable was only 3.5, is there a reason for that? Is there way to check how much ram is being used/available to unraid?

EDIT: typed "free -m" in telnet, said i had total of 4.5GB ram...does that seem right?

 

There are chunks of memory used for BIOS and PCI address space.

On some motherboards you will only get 3.2GB usable out of 4GB.  Some are 3.5GB.

So 512M reserved for system utilization is normal.

if the motherboard has built in video or adjustable aperture (AGP) you can get some memory back be lowering these values.

 

One motherboard of mine supported 256M down to 8M, so I put it down to 8M to give ram back to the system.

[Chriz]

I'm thinking about getting one of these as well... On http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/entry/AAR-1430SA/index.htm it says "48-bit LBA support for drives above 137GB" though. Shouldn't it be 64bit in order to support even bigger disks (1-2TB)? Most HighPoint cards seem to offer 64bit LBA...

[stchas]

Shouldn't it be 64bit in order to support even bigger disks (1-2TB)?

 

Tom is using the 1430SA in his MD-1510 Media Storage Server, but he doesn't warn of a drive size limitation.  However, I saw a negative review of the 1430SA on Newegg that "Adaptec support states that none of their hostraid based controllers support 1.5TB drives, and they have no plans to support them in the future."  Has anybody had success with this controller in their unRAID with drives larger than 1.0 TB?

[SSD]

With 48-bit LBA there is a limit of 144 petabytes (144,000,000 gigabytes). The next capacity barrier will come sooner than that at 2.2 terabytes (2,200 gigabytes) because many of today's operating systems are based on 32-bit addressing. With hard disk capacities growing at the current rate it is estimated that hard drives at this limit could be available as early as 2004.

 

(from here)

 

I think it will be a while til we need 64 bit LBA. 

 

UPDATE:  I just looked on newegg and see the person posting that 1.5T drives are not supported ("according to Adaptect support").  I think that this is highly unlikely, but have been surprised before.  1.5T is WAY WAY short of 144,000T (144 PiB) limit of 48 bit addressing.  If 1.5T is not supported, I think many would be justifyably screaming for their money back.  Adaptec is in the business of making drive controllers.  I doubt they would be saying that they would not be supporting the next generation of drives.

 

I just went through the user manual (I own 2 of the 1430SAs) and there is nothing in there about a limit on the size of a drive you can install.

 

I think it is more likely that the limit which Adaptec has no plans to address is the 2.2TB limit using 32 bit OSes.  If more that 4G of memory doesn't push you to a 64-bit OS, perhaps this will.

[jesseasi]

Shouldn't it be 64bit in order to support even bigger disks (1-2TB)?

 

Tom is using the 1430SA in his MD-1510 Media Storage Server, but he doesn't warn of a drive size limitation.  However, I saw a negative review of the 1430SA on Newegg that "Adaptec support states that none of their hostraid based controllers support 1.5TB drives, and they have no plans to support them in the future."  Has anybody had success with this controller in their unRAID with drives larger than 1.0 TB?

 

I have 3 of these cards on an Intel D975XBX2 board (board has 3 PCI-E slots).  I am using 16 Seagate 1.5 TB drives.  Everything works just fine.  Upon boot-up only 2 of the adaptec cards seem to initialize although the 3rd one is working just fine.  Just remember to disable all the features in the bios.

 

I however don't get very fast parity checks - only about 38MB/Sec.

 

 

[pussnbootlp]

I'm thinking about getting one of these as well... On http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/Controllers/Hardware/sata/entry/AAR-1430SA/index.htm it says "48-bit LBA support for drives above 137GB" though. Shouldn't it be 64bit in order to support even bigger disks (1-2TB)? Most HighPoint cards seem to offer 64bit LBA...

 

To support more than 2TB disk, please go to adaptec websites: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/downloads/bios_fw/bios_fw_ver?productId=AAR-1430SA&dn=Adaptec+Serial+ATA+II+RAID+1430SA

 

Downloads & update Bios 2322 and about.

 

Releast Notes from Bios 2322:

 

"4. Major Functional changes:

--------------------------------

 

1. Greater than 2TB logical drive supported."

 

 

[gregoryx]

Just plugged my first one of the 1430SA cards in (and disabled the Adaptec BIOS) and the system wouldn't fire up in UnRaid until I plugged a drive into the card. I tried MB BIOS settings - including disabling the secondary SATA controller in the MB BIOS - but same results.

 

After I plugged a drive into it, it started up with the array off-line (missing drive). I added the drive back in and started the array and all is well. All the MB BIOS settings are all back to normal - all 8 ports on two controllers back enabled.

 

Is this typical / normal?

 

I have a second 1430SA coming - so that the system is 100% ready for 16 drives - and I'm guessing I'll have to plug a drive into it as well. If this is bad or abnormal or reason to be concerned, it's not too late for me to return the motherboard (Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H).

[prostuff1]

Look for a section in the BIOS that says something like "halt on" and then gives you options.  Set it so that the computer boots no mater any error and see if that fixes the problem.

[gregoryx]

It was making it all the way through the BIOS to a flashing cursor thing. Almost like it was trying to boot from the wrong device.

 

I take it others have these cards plugged into the MB without any drives plugged into them?

[Joe L.]

It was making it all the way through the BIOS to a flashing cursor thing. Almost like it was trying to boot from the wrong device.

 

I take it others have these cards plugged into the MB without any drives plugged into them?

Many motherboard BIOS "help" you by making a newly added drive the "boot" drive.  You are probably exactly correct in that the BIOS probably needed to be pointed to the flash drive once again as the boot device.