Comments on: “I’ll build a new server; it’s got to be easier than patching up the old one…”

By: mattias

mattias — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:33:48 +0000

Seagate has finally publicly posted firmware updates for the affected Barracuda drives:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207963

By: Tim Bishop

Tim Bishop — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:09:28 +0000

Hi Terje,

I don’t get any timeouts doing that dd. Have you limited the drive speeds to 1.5Gbps? That fixed the timeouts for me.

Also, have you changed the cables?

Finally, are you running the latest firmware for the 9690SA? I’m not, but it may or may not help.

You could try 3ware’s support people. They’re good at getting back to you, but not always so good at being helpful…

Tim.

By: Terje Marthinussen

Terje Marthinussen — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:37:38 +0000

Hi,

I bought an 9690SA the other day. While it is “working”, if I put it under some stress, I get timeouts no matter what settings I try, firmware or drivers.

The timeouts only seem to happen on read (at least it does not log any on writes, which does not really prove anything) and to 3ware’s defense, they seem to handle timeouts pretty well. Do not drop drives easily (like for instance areca does).

I have now tried 3 different disk models, and all fails. 2 WDC and one samsung. I have also tried 2 G.SKILL Titan SSDs, but the 9690SA does not detect them at all. I plan to try som old seagates just to test.

The 2 WDCs both run without any fuzz on my ARC-1220, the samsung run fine in raid1 on the ARC-1220, but it does not like raid5 for some reason (the samsungs will drop from the raid under a bit load).

All of these drives produce timeouts on the 9690SA no matter raid type, connection speed, queueing policies or other things, but raid1 seem to generate less timeouts.

Can you tun a simple test on you setup and see what happens?

The test I do is just:
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=32000; dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=32000; dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/null bs=1024k count=32000

and it is almost certain to generate at least a couple of timeouts within doing this twice.

Yes, that is a simple dd that reads 32GB from the raw device. It is repeated 3 times.

You could probably just read 100GB instead in one dd.

I am starting to believe that there is something really bogus with this controller, it is just that it takes a fair bit of I/O to trigger it, and when it happens, it handles the timeouts so gracefully that most people never notice unless they actually read the logs.

This controller clearly have very good timeout handling, but I would rather be without the errors in the first place.

By: Urs Mueller

Urs Mueller — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 22:53:08 +0000

Thanks for blogging about. Finally I have found a spot to look at.
Have an Areca ARC-1680 SAS/SATA-RAID controller and eight ST3500320NS. Under heavy load, the ARC-1680 looses drives.
Will see, if SEAGATE will provide me the new Firmware.

By: Clemens Rossell

Clemens Rossell — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:29:31 +0000

Thanks so much for blogging about this issue! I found it through a Google search, after running mad trying to figure out why my RAID5 array keeps going into a degraded state. I also am using the 3Ware 9690SA-4I card, however, I’m using Seagate 7200.11 drives (very similar to ES.2 model). They came with SD15 firmware. I’ve contacted 3Ware and they said I need to replace my cables and reseat my card/drives (which obviously is not the issue). I really hope someone at 3Ware is investigating this issue, other Google searches have found lots of folks have this issue and Seagate tells me the SD15 firmware is the latest for the model drive I own. So annoying. Nobody seems to be looking into this issue from either company.

By: mattias

mattias — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:07:18 +0000

I have similar issues with a ST31000340NS drive with SN04 firmware (CRC-errors and timouts). I’ve found a download link for the AN05 version over at Adaptecs Knowledge base, but have been unable to find version SN05.

Maybe you could mail me a the link too?

By: Riaan

Riaan — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:24:08 +0000

Hi, can you please mail me the link you used for the AN05 firmware as well?

I downloaded the file at http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/disc/download/ES2AN05B-3D4DMoose.iso but it only contains a text file, no update utility or firmware image!

By: Tim Bishop

Tim Bishop — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:07:22 +0000

I’ve had contact from someone else who’s having similar issues with eight 7200.11 drives connected to the same card. Dropping the speed to 1.5Gb/s reduced his timeout problems (under load), but didn’t completely resolve them. He also gets CRC errors but so far hasn’t found a firmware that resolves the issue.

It looks like this problem might resurface one day

Come on 3ware and/or Seagate, pull your fingers out!

By: Tim Bishop

Tim Bishop — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:11:10 +0000

kam, I’ve emailed you with a link. Also note that Seagate support can provide you with a copy of the SN05 firmware (that’s where I got it from).

By: kam

kam — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:41:31 +0000

Hello,

I just found your blog in google.

I had purchase two ST3500320NS recently and they are with SN04 firmware.

Someone told me I need to update to SN05 from SN04 first, then update from SN05 to AN05.

However, I only got AN05 download link but I do not have SN05 download link.

May you please share the seagate SN05 firmware link to me ?

Or sent it to my email ?

Thanks