using sata3 drives

[gordon]

Model Name : GA-X58A-UD3R(rev 2.0)
M/B Rev : 2.0
BIOS Ver. : FB
Serial No. :
Purchase Dealer :
VGA Brand : Nvidia      Model : GTS250
CPU Brand : Intel      Model : i7 350      Speed : 3.2 MHz
Operation System : Win 7 64-bit      SP :
Memory Brand : GSKILL      Type : DDR3
Memory Size : 4GB X 3      Speed : PC1600
Power Supply : 750 W
Hi. I updated BIOS to ver. FB which was successful. I want to run 2 SATA3 drives in Raid 0, drives connected to port 6 and7. Now i am able to create the virtual disks using the RMU UTILITY in Windows but not in the bios setup menu. In Integrated Peripherals i set SATA3 MODE TO RAID THEN SAVE. When i re-enter Integrated Peripherals and try to enter SATA3 CONFIGURATION an am prevented from doing so with this message that is shown...

" SATA3 IS NOW WORKING IN IDE MODE, CHANGE TO RAID MODE FIRST. BESIDES, HDDS SHOULD BE PLUGGED INTO SATA3 PORTS AND REBOOT THE SYSTEM TO CONFIGURE SATA3 RAID IN BIOS SETUP MENU. IT SEEMS THAT THE COMPUTER DOES NOT RECOGNISE THE CHANGES THAT I MADE. ANY ANSWERS?

I SUPPOSE MY CONCERN IS THAT I MAY NOT BE GETTING THE FULL BENEFIT FROM THE DRIVES...WHICH ARE 2 WESTERN DIGITAL - WD6402AAEX-00Z3A0 by the way. Look forward to your reply.

[absic]

Western Digital Black 640GB SATA3 6GB/s HDD's correct?

Not designed for RAID you need WD Enterprise Edition HDD's for that. I know I bought a couple of these for a RAID array and found out the hard way, they don't work!

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the forum. Thanks for posting here as it is better than dealing with it by PM.

Right short answer....give up!

Long answer.... Unless I am mistaken the drives are Western Digital SATA3 6GBs blacks. If that is so they have the new firmware that doesn't support TLER and so won't RAID successfully. They will either not not be picked up in the first place or wil be dropped  whilst in use. Secondly if I remember rightly ports 6 & 7 are the SATA3 ports controlled by the Marvell 9128 controller. This is cr*p not to put to fine a point on it and just won't be able to handle a SATA3 RAID0 array. The throughput would be too much for it. Single drives are fine but even then don't expect proper SATA3 rates. Sorry but you are not the only one to be caught here.

SNAP!
Damn that absic and his short answers

[JakeF150]

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=792

Ideal For

Power computing applications such as multimedia, video and photo editing, and maxed out gaming computers.

Desktop / Consumer RAID Environments - WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are tested and recommended for use in consumer-type RAID applications (Raid-0 / RAID-1).*

*Business Critical RAID Environments – WD Caviar Black Hard Drives are not recommended for and are not warranted for use in RAID environments utilizing Enterprise HBAs and/or expanders and in multi-bay chassis, as they are not designed for, nor tested in, these specific types of RAID applications. For all Business Critical RAID applications, please consider WD's Enterprise Hard Drives that are specifically designed with RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER), are tested extensively in 24x7 RAID applications, and include features like enhanced RAFF technology and thermal extended burn-in testing.

[Dark Mantis]

I know that is what it might say on the website Jake but I had discussions with WD techs and they agreed that these drives were  not good for RAID and that if I wanted to run an array the best thing was to return them and purchase Enterprise versions. Absic and I both tried to run them without success whereas Hitachi drives in the same configuration were fine.

[absic]

What DM says is correct but, I have recently switched my motherboard to a GA-890FXA-UD5 that uses a different SATA3 controller to my previous motherboard (GA-790XTA-UD4) that uses the Marvell 9128 SATA3 Controller.

I have now been testing a RAID0 Array on the AMD SB850 chip with 2x WD Caviar Black 640GB SATA3 6GB/s HDD's and, so far they have proved to be very solid (it's been running for 6 days). So it might not be the HDD's themselves but the way they interact with the Marvell 9128 controller that is the real problem.

There are a few minor issues but I haven't pinned down where the problems actually lie, it could be software or the HDD's. These problems show up as occasional delays when accessing files on the Array or sometimes there is stuttering when playing audio files which again would point to a problem with accessing the files. These problems are very intermittent and have faded the more I am using the system.

I am using this RAID0 Array as my BOOT drive so Windows 7 is installed on to it and it could just be a problem with the way Windows 7 indexes the files on the drives.