I can't say with certainty because not enough users use them long enough for anyone to report issues. 
That would be one of the most diplomatic statement I've had the pleasure to read in some time Lsdmeasap .... My attempts usually end up sounding like a "Hand grenade in a chicken coop" .... to be fair to the Marvell logo, .... and head off a slapping around the head for a retraction..........Marvells 9128 chip is only one of many ..... there market penetration is also huge .... if you turn over your hard drive ... odds on you'll see a Marvell logo.
The 9128 fiasco was limited to just that chip and only under certain platforms .... as I stated earlier I have a raid card that using this same chip(S) with no problems .... lets just hope the advice given to Nealab helps him to a solution.
Aussie Allan
Are you being mean or sarcastic, or is this a compliment? Sorry I'm not sure, and this is the second time you referred to me as diplomatic, so I wanted to ask to be sure what you meant. Hopefully it's a nice comment, I don't try to make anyone mad, rather the opposite as I try to avoid making anyone mad or stepping on anyone's toes. If it was meant as a compliment, thank you! If you were being bad, shame on you and Grrrrrr!
J/K
Yes, I have a RR 640 here too, and it's much better than a single 9128, due to dual chips and an extra PCIE lane, plus the bridge chip. But it can easily be overloaded too, with two SSD's or four. Found in RAID will slow it down just like the onboard single chips, and 2 SSD's can do that too if you don't connect them correctly. When using 2 SSDs on the 640 you have to make sure you only put one SSD on each controller, so they split the load. But even when you don't, using 2 SSD's, it's still not as unstable or slow as the onboard solutions.
I used it in my awesome C300 review, if you have a few hours you can read it here if you're interested.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=261789Ans yes, I use Marvell based drives, C300's and soon to be M4's. I also like their new onboard solution, it's a much needed improvement to the 9128, the 9182 and 9172 are pretty good controllers, but since they are now used on P67/Z68 boards that's a little bit too late since Intel finally stepped up!
Now, wheres our Native 4-6 6Gb/s ports Intel, they were supposed to arrive with X79???
Just for clarity (and it's not directly relevant to what I'm testing at the moment) can I ask which controller you guys mean when you say "JMicron"?
According to the motherboard manual (decoded from the original Japanese by a blind Urdu speaker who once learnt French at school and who speaks neither Japanese nor English) I think that there are four disk controllers on the UD3R board.(*)
- Intel RAID controller. 6 ports, SATA2, can support mix of one RAID set and a bunch of other single drives.
- Marvell 9128 controller. 2 ports, SATA3. I have this one disabled at BIOS level as it seemed to be associated with hangs earlier in the boot sequence than I'm now seeing - although that might have been the USB3 controller. Anyway, I don't have any drives fast enough to justify it
- Gigabyte controller. 2 ports, SATA2, which I'm now using for a couple of DVD drives so speed is not an issue.
- JMicron controller, 2 ports but eSATA and hard-wired to a couple of USB/eSATA ports on the back panel.
The ICH10R drives the Intel SATA ports directly, but the other three controllers hang off PCIe bus(es) driven by the ICH10R, so it's reasonable to assume that the Intel ports would be faster overall. So, whether or not the controller choice is the root of my problem, from a performance point of view it wasn't the best idea in the world to put the system disk on the "Gigabyte" controller. Ho hum - we live and learn! In any case, the ICH10R is an integral part of the chipset while the Gigabyte (and Marvell) controllers are a level of driver away - although presumably the BIOS code should be able to handle drives connected to these for reading, for example, hiberfil.sys. But maybe that's the point where it gets a bit flaky.
(*)Actually, that's rather unfair and it's better than some I've seen, but you always feel that it nearly but not quite tells you the things that you really want to know - especially around BIOS settings which are never well-explained.
J.Micron ports are the ones labeled GSATA2_8/9, the last set of ports at the bottom of the SATA stack.
Yes, there is four hard drive controllers, and they are as you mentioned, ICH10R (SATA2_0-6), Marvell 9128 (GSATA3_6/7), J.Micron JMB362 (2 eSATA on Rear I/O panel), and Gigabyte/ Also J.Micron (GSATA_8/9 + IDE x 2 ports). If you want a good view on what's what, generally the motherboard block diagram shows you everything fairly well towards the front of the manual (Page 8 for this board). A better description of the controllers used on each board is best described on the motherboards homepage, in specifications, in case you want to look up other boards or future board details. Once you look at the specs on those pages, and then the block diagram, it's much easier to see what's really under the hood.
Any results yet on the move to the Intel ports? Another thing I thought to mention to you earlier today is this, sometimes with any board if you put it to sleep S1 or S3 all the time, but never actually shut it down or reset it, this can end up leading to issues eventually. So from time to time be sure you do an actual shut down or reset when time permits.
