9650SE & Samsung F1 (HD753LJ) wont play nice

lost.prophet · 19 Jan 2009 at 10:24

My company is building some servers in house, and we recently tried to build a computer with 8 Samsung F1's and a 9650SE (we want 2 x RAID10 configs, but at this point that is irrelivant).

Everytime we go to create a new unit, the firmware freezes up and hangs for a while, and then throws up the error message "There is no response from the firmware. Please hit a key to continue"

We have updated the BIOS on the motherboard, updated the firmware on the card, we have used the hard drives with the onboard RAID controler with no problems and have used other drives with the RAID card which worked, yet according to 3Ware (the manufacturer of the card) the Hard drives are compatible with it.

Can anyone help with this issue at all? Has anyone used these hard drives with a RAID controller? I don't really want to try and RMA 28 Hard Drives when they are not faulty :confused:

Vince · 19 Jan 2009 at 10:59

I have 4 F1 1tb disks in raid in a HP Proliant DL180 G5. Using the onboard sata raid if thats any help.

malds001 · 19 Jan 2009 at 11:19

Why do you not use enterprise class products for servers? These HDD units iirc have error checking which is handled by your raid controller.

I know the product description says the following but I wouldn't belive it for a seconds.

"Servers, high-end desktops, RAID systems and DVRs are among the applications well suited to the Spinpoint F1 drive. The drive is available with desktop PC- or RAID-level reliability. Mean time between failures for RAID reliability is up to 1.2 million hours. A rotational vibration sensor enables the drive to operate more efficiently in a RAID environment."

If so then why do they produce enterprise (ES) disks...

I use the same card with WD RE3 drives.

Vince · 19 Jan 2009 at 12:22

malds001 said:
Why do you not use enterprise class products for servers? These HDD units iirc have error checking which is handled by your raid controller.

I know the product description says the following but I wouldn't belive it for a seconds.

"Servers, high-end desktops, RAID systems and DVRs are among the applications well suited to the Spinpoint F1 drive. The drive is available with desktop PC- or RAID-level reliability. Mean time between failures for RAID reliability is up to 1.2 million hours. A rotational vibration sensor enables the drive to operate more efficiently in a RAID environment."

If so then why do they produce enterprise (ES) disks...

I use the same card with WD RE3 drives.

This is hardly helpful... It's very easy to look at a situation and ask why didn't you... but I don’t believe the OP said "these don't work, spec me a disk that does'.

Nice try mind.

lost.prophet · 19 Jan 2009 at 13:30

VinceB1 said:
I have 4 F1 1tb disks in raid in a HP Proliant DL180 G5. Using the onboard sata raid if thats any help.

We have it working with a P5Q with onboard RAID, so we know it is compatability between the card and drives.

We originally used WD Caviar Blacks but we were told buy several suplliers (including overclockers) that they were becoming hard to get hold of, and we didn't want the problem of limited availibility. The samsungs were supposed to be good drives, got good reviews, were on the compatability list for the RAID card and were availible for purchase.

3Ware support have been less than helpful, I doubt Samsung support would even be interested in tryign to answer, I just though someone may have tried the same config. We are really tearign our hair out here

DustyMiller · 20 Jan 2009 at 06:55

And herein lies the issue. your data is so important that it needs a raid 10 pack to protect it, and yet you wont go and buy an off the shelf and ratified and supported soloution, and the money you were trying to save is slowly flying out of the window due to you not being able to get it to work. There is a logic there I am sure.

EsaT · 20 Jan 2009 at 12:02

Might be that only certain firmware Samsungs work.
In early fall 3ware recommended to completely avoid F1 Samsungs because of known problems with them. (F1s weren't even on whole list then)

celliott · 30 Jan 2009 at 17:06

Onboard RAID is correctly called "FakeRAID", because thats all it is, Fake RAID which is handled on the driver level. There is no controller involved. It is VERY, VERY rare that you have hardware based onboard RAID, unless you have a Supermicro/Tyan server board - some of those do

With FakeRAID the drives are still doing error correction. With a proper controller card, the controller does the correction.

Use RAID certified drives, or if you use WD drives you can disable the built in error recovery with a utility even on the Green/Blue/Black desktop series.

nightmare99 · 31 Jan 2009 at 17:26

Hmm I read somewhere the other day about this issue, I think it might have been the openfiler or open-e forum. I believe the poster had to install a previous firmware on the drives.

EDIT: Actually looking at it the issue might be different, as posted @ openfiler forums

A word of warning - the latest firmware update for Samsung 750gb drives (08.2008 manufacture with a firmware ending in 114) causes errors with a 3ware 9650 controller, whereas the 113 firmware does not. I'm mentioning this in case the same firmware upgrade flows through to their other models.

lost.prophet · 2 Feb 2009 at 12:14

DustyMiller said:
And herein lies the issue. your data is so important that it needs a raid 10 pack to protect it, and yet you wont go and buy an off the shelf and ratified and supported soloution, and the money you were trying to save is slowly flying out of the window due to you not being able to get it to work. There is a logic there I am sure.

I HATE it when sarky people chime in with nothing to say but crap that doesn't help. Thanks, you were well worth the waste of time it took to read your post. :mad:

We are building it ourselves so we can fix it ourselves when it goes wrong, we use parts we can get hold and we know work (once we get a finalised soulution of course) This isn't a 'saving money issue' at all, so mayby you should keep your mouth shut and let the grownups talk eh?

It looks like the card and HDD's just arn't compatible (even though 3ware are still claiming thye are and that we have 6 faulty cards :confused:

) but we are gonna use WD RE3's instead.

Thanks to everyone who actually tried to help

DustyMiller · 2 Feb 2009 at 18:14

lost.prophet said:
I HATE it when sarky people chime in with nothing to say but crap that doesn't help. Thanks, you were well worth the waste of time it took to read your post.

We are building it ourselves so we can fix it ourselves when it goes wrong, we use parts we can get hold and we know work (once we get a finalised soulution of course) This isn't a 'saving money issue' at all, so mayby you should keep your mouth shut and let the grownups talk eh?

It looks like the card and HDD's just arn't compatible (even though 3ware are still claiming thye are and that we have 6 faulty cards ) but we are gonna use WD RE3's instead.

Thanks to everyone who actually tried to help

Ill ignore the abusive remarks, and just give you this to think on.

Ok in 18 months time one of you precious drives fails that you managed to get to work. Only to find out that they drive is no longer available, what do you do, well what do you do, start all over again trying to find a drive that is again compatible with your non standard non supportable RAID pack. Or heaven's forbid you leave the company you are with, and with you leaving take all the knowledge of what you have built. who is going to fix it then.

Now how about you take a step back and make a grown up business decision.

You know nothing of my work history, or what I can or cant do. but I certainly would never think of putting anything that is so business critical onto a home made RAID soloution.

Vince · 3 Feb 2009 at 13:53

DustyMiller said:
Ill ignore the abusive remarks, and just give you this to think on.

Ok in 18 months time one of you precious drives fails that you managed to get to work. Only to find out that they drive is no longer available, what do you do, well what do you do, start all over again trying to find a drive that is again compatible with your non standard non supportable RAID pack. Or heaven's forbid you leave the company you are with, and with you leaving take all the knowledge of what you have built. who is going to fix it then.

Now how about you take a step back and make a grown up business decision.

You know nothing of my work history, or what I can or cant do. but I certainly would never think of putting anything that is so business critical onto a home made RAID soloution.

I have to say, having read this thread from the beginning that I agree with prophet. He was asking what seemed a simple question whereby the manufacturer of a specific product claims that it is compatible with a certain drive. All you guys seem to do is criticise decisions as opposed to offer support or your knowledge, this seems to be the overall view on this entire forum in almost all sections.

Personally I can see many reasons why you would buy a solution whereby you are implimenting it yourself, on another note I can see the merits in the "ratified and supported soloution". However what I cannont understand, nor can I see the merit in, is the attitude with which people answer a seemingly simple question, I mean really is there any need?

DustyMiller · 3 Feb 2009 at 14:09

There is a difference from buying a soloution and implementing it yourself, to buying bits and building the soloution and then implementing it, and then having to support it for the next x years.

Vince · 3 Feb 2009 at 14:14

DustyMiller said:
There is a difference from buying a soloution and implementing it yourself, to buying bits and building the soloution and then implementing it, and then having to support it for the next x years.

Don't get me wrong I don't completly disagree with what you are saying and if it was my option I would more than likely be buying from hp or dell.

yashiro · 3 Feb 2009 at 19:36

You could mount the drive in Linux and check what feature flags are set using sdparm.
If you run it side by side with a working drive you might see a difference that is possibly fixable.

If you can't get it to work plug em all in with no controller and put Solaris on the machine.

madman045 · 3 Feb 2009 at 19:54

ok, could you post the spec of the machine you have it all plugged into and how you have it configured, such a which slot you have the 3ware card in etc..?

As there might be more than one factor here causing your problem

Also the F1 drives, are they model HD103UJ with the 1AA01104 firmware? as thats the supported configuration for the 9650SE card except the raid edition ones