3TB RAID array

[Myasinax]

I'm sure there are some of you out there like myself that have more than 1 x 3TB drive and want to arrange them in a RAID array. I currently have bought 6, to place with the Intel ICH10R controller found on my and most other Gigabyte boards. My board is a X58-UD3R Rev 1.0. Now Intel currently does not support drives >2.2 TB on the Intel chipset, but just last month Asus managed a workaround in their BIOS which allows the formation of a RAID array using 3TB drives. Although Intel are claiming that "greater than 2.2TB RAID support is coming in future revisions" of the storage controller, it's been over 7 months since that claim and 1 year since 3TB were commercially available.
I wonder if Gigabyte has any intention of updating it's BIOS as Asus have done to allow 3TB RAID arrays to work with the Intel chipset? 

[Aussie Allan]

  "SIX THREE TB HARD DRIVES".........."Are you Mad"..........Serious bragging rites for porn storage!......Even Patriot Missile battery's don't carry this much storage!

  Oh Well! where there's a will theres a way!.........have a look at the RocketRaid PCI-E card by HighPoint.........the 640 card does SATA3 over 4 ports and from memory can handle large arays......0,1,5 and 10 I think........does JBOD as well so you could even link them into one massive 18TB drive

 Ive got 4 SamSung SpinPoints F3s (502HJ) in raid0 for storage and get 530Mb/s on a short stroke bench

 Aussie Allan

[F5BJR]

*
This solution sure is good : 4 * TowerRaid TRM5M+B with  5 * 3TB harddisks Hitachi (0F12456)

and as Aussie Allan one RR640 HighPoint card

http://www.sansdigital.com/towerraid-/tr5mplusb.html

Pierre

[F5BJR]

*
Finnaly i think that is possible if you find a hacked BIOS for your motherBoard with last OROM INTEL ( 10.5.1064 ) and last driver

But you cannot boot a big RAID partition in GPT because GigaByte BIOS is not UEFI

For boot use another harddisk or also possible if you have 2 * partitions ( a little for boot in NTFS and another big partition in GPT for datas )

But i cannot test because i have not 3TB harddisks !!!

Pierre

* If i have a little time i hack a BIOS with last OROM for you ...

[F5BJR]

*
I cannot test , i have not you motherboard card but i have updated your F7M ( last beta ) with OROM  v10.5.1.1070 for test

*** obviously has your own risk ***

filesonic : http://www.filesonic.com/file/1515384681/f7m.rar

remember you cannot boot partition > 2TO

Pierre

[F5BJR]

*
A little new OROM ( version 10.6.0.1091 ) for the F7M BIOS

filesonic : http://www.filesonic.com/file/1515434704/f7m.rar

Pierre

[Myasinax]

Hi gents, thanks for all of the responses!! Re the 3TB drives, got a fairly good deal on 6 of them sub £100 each and they are the enterprise editions for RAID. I am basically hosting a server with all of my bluray and music media served to multiple rooms and hence needed the increased storage.

Pierre, I am currently on F8A which is the most recent Beta BIOS, but the previous beta BIOS is F7L. Is it still ok to flash the F7M BIOS, as my board is a Rev 1 UD3R.

The C drive is a OCZ Revo x2, so I do not need to boot from these drives, just create a RAID 5 array on the Intel chipset.

I have looked at the external and internal solutions, but they are expensive and somewhat limiting, as they allow only 4, or 5 disc arrays. I need to use the 6!

Thanks for all of the advice guys, your help is very much appreciated.

 

[F5BJR]

*
Quickly hack the F8A for your GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 1.0) X58-UD3R not exist !!

filesonic : http://www.filesonic.com/file/1515688754/f8a.rar

Pierre

[F5BJR]

*
I have this but not infos if Addonics support 3 TB harddisks !!

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,3338.msg24483.html#msg24483

computer photos :

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2373.msg31945.html#msg31945

Pierre

[Myasinax]

*
I have this but not infos if Addonics support 3 TB harddisks !!

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,3338.msg24483.html#msg24483

Pierre

Hi Pierre

Thanks, will give it a go, but the other BIOS came up with a BIOS chksum error and the board defaulted to BIOS F4!
Hopefully, the F8A BIOS will work! Can I ask the about the hack that's applied? Does it see the drives as UEFI?

Cheers

 

[Myasinax]

Hi Pierre
Thanks for all of your effort! 
No luck with the hacked BIOS I'm afraid.....the basic values are all off ...CPU, Memory etc everytime I go into the BIOS to set the RAID and with each of the BIOS, a chksum error initiates a reboot and fall back to a safe BIOS F4.
It does look like the only solution to this until both Gigabyte and Intel pull their respective fingers out, is for either an external or internal raid card which supports 3TB drives. 

Lame.

[F5BJR]

*

Possible error ... but normally i use for my X58A-UD5 without problem

finnaly i have make possible error with ACPI

i have make a new F8A : http://www.filesonic.com/file/1516322034/f8a_new.rar

--> i have modified also my BIOS and run at this time with the 10.6.0.1091 OROM version !!

Pierre

*
I use CBROM32

at startup i extract all parts

after i remove and i reinsert with the old / new parts


Remove.bat

CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM7 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /GROUP17 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM6 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /LOGO release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM0 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /GV3 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /LOGO1 release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI release
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI release

**

NEW.BAT

CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI ICHAAHCI.BIN
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI ICHARAID.BIN
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI JMB10706.BIN
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /PCI rtegrom.lom
pause
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /LOGO1 dbios.bmp
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /GV3 ppminit.rom
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM0 sbf.bin
pause
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /LOGO 333_bios.bmp
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM6 graid.bin
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /GROUP17 m9123fw.bin
CBROM32 F8A.BIN /OEM7 extbios.bin

[Aussie Allan]

  Good on you Pierre for going to that much trouble...........

  Myasinax ...........  Ive seen a few new Techs of late that could be used in your situation, at the very least, they should drive down the price of older , similar technology

 1) I still think the PCI-E Raid card option is a cost effective solution worth considering but check the specs on volume limits..........RR640 go for about the $120-140 mark for a internal solution and the 644 for external for about the same

 2) NAS boxes can now be purchased Empty...........which means cheap copies should be filtering through shortly ... check ebay!

 What where talking about here really with what your trying to do is mixing technologies.........to get an easily configurable, stable raid5 setup with 6x3TB drives , ....you may have to look at a separate , independent storage solution and link it to your present system.........this way of thinking will open doors to what hardware is available to you ....... connectivity can then be wired or wireless

  P.S  from experience........5 physical drives is the sweet spot for raid5 and Revodrive x2...........Bloody awesome aren't they! .... also noticed on the OCZ website yesterday..........in the support section , RevoDrive X3 got a mention in the driver list......ooooOOOOOoooo!

 Aussie Allan

[Dark Mantis]

Yes the Revo X3 is a truly awsome beast. Terrific throughput!

[Myasinax]

Cheers guys for all of the advice and again thanks Pierre for your help.
Until Intel support 3TB drives in their raid storage manager, I imagine updating the OROM version in the BIOS will have little effect. The drives are always seen as approximately 750 Gb each when trying to initiate the RAID, as the BIOS can not currently see the already GPT partitioned drives. How Asus got around that without Intel revising it's RAID controller, I'm not so sure??
There are a number of 5-bay solutions that I will look at which support 3TB drives, but the cost increases tenfold when you move to 6 drives and above!

Re the OCZ Revo X3, pretty awesome piece of kit.......... although getting the Revo X2 to work with this board was enough of a headache!!! What has suprisingly worked well for me is the combination of this and 4Gb of my 12Gb RAM used as a temp drive (RAMdisk) and Virtual Memory switched down to zero. System is blazingly fast.