About Areca ARC-1680ix

B

bonehead42

n00b
Joined
Jul 30, 2008
Messages
12
Hi

I'm about to order one of these cards (16 port model), but I'm unsure about what cables are in the box. I can't find any info on Arecas own site.

According to pictures on newegg it seems like there are only minisas to minisas cables in the box, can anyone confirm this?
 
yeah its probably gonna only come with 4x miniSAS -> miniSAS and you will need to buy breakout cables. Buyer beware if you are going to use AS series segate drives with this controller (incase you don't already know about the issues).
 
Check, I'll order some extra cable with the card.

I think I'll much rather have a controller that's picky about what drives it uses then live with the extremely slow OCE of the Adaptec card I have now.
 
bonehead42 said:
Check, I'll order some extra cable with the card.

I think I'll much rather have a controller that's picky about what drives it uses then live with the extremely slow OCE of the Adaptec card I have now.
Click to expand...

Yeah especially when the adaptecs (atleast the actually decently fast ones) have the exact same incompatibility issues as well. It looks like the 1.5 TB drives (with newer firmware) might be compatable with the areca-1680ix since they are with the adaptecs (with the newer firmware).

This also leads me to believe the ST31000333AS (1TB) disk will also work as it uses the same firmware as the 1.5 TB:

http://ask.adaptec.com/scripts/adap...F9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1zZWFnYXRl&p_li=&p_topview=1

I am actually starting to think the ARC-1222 isn't fully compatible with the ST31000340AS like has been suggested. I don't get timeouts with the drives but the array has been kicking out a drive every couple of days. I have been replacing them with ST31000333AS (CC1F firmware) and so far it hasn't kicked out any of those even though I was originally replacing them with a new 340AS drive and it has kicked those out since being replaced.

At this point of the 8 drives only 2 of them are the 340AS now (all the rest have been kicked out). I have a feeling I will be replacing the last two 340AS's sometime this week and will probably report back on how its running with the 333AS's (if any get kicked out in the next couple of weeks).
 
The 1680ix is part one of at larger project to expand my current storage server. The next thing will probably be a Norco RPC-3116 cabinet.

My existing solution consists of an Adaptec 3805 8x1TB WD RE2-GB in RAID 5. This array has performed really well, but the few times I have expanteded it with new disks has been too much. Going from 7 to 8 disks took around 3 weeks, I would never wish to that again!

The 1.5TB Seagates look very interesting because of their price and the new 2TB disks are still way to expensive. And since I don't expect to start off with 16 disks all at once, the OCE times are very important to me.
 
Just FYI, the SD1A and SD1B firmware variants of the 1.5TB seagates work fine on my Adaptec 51645, and the older model 1TB w/ SD1A works fine (no dropouts, no aborted commands), but the older 7200.10 drives cause dropouts and aborted commands.

Note that they don't list the CCXX or LCXX firmwares on the Adaptec compatibility list,
but last time I tried they didn't even get detected by the card.
I haven't tried the CCXX firmwares on the Areca, but i have a 1231ML, not a 1680ix.

But yeah, OCE on the Adaptecs are dog slow, whereas on the Areca it's lightning fast.
If you don't really need the SAS support, you might just consider getting a 1261 or 1280ML.
 
I believe that the newer firmware on the 7200.11s (1.5TB included) doesn't fix the compatibility issue with Areca's SAS controllers. You pretty much have to use the ES.2 drives instead (which means 1TB max at the moment).
 
Well, the 1680ix-16 is actually cheaper then the 1231ml and 1280ml where I'm ordering. And I like the idea of SAS support, even if I don't need it right away.

How are WD compatility with the 1680ix? I would also expect the WS 2TB to drop in price soon, so they might become a real alternative to the 1.5TB Seagates.

But I can run for some time with my existing WD RE2-GP disks without needing to upgrade.
 
According to Areca's compatibility list, most newer WD drives work just fine. I would flash the controller with the latest firmware when you get it before you start adding drives however.
 
Blue Fox said:
According to Areca's compatibility list, most newer WD drives work just fine. I would flash the controller with the latest firmware when you get it before you start adding drives however.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good advice. I'll keep that in mind.
 
any updates on the 1.5tb working on the areca? i'm ready to order a raid card and this seems like the best for me. i need 20 internal and an external to use with my 16 bay sas expander.

so far i have 5 1.5tb seagates and would like to stick with those. all cc1h firmware.
 
I've got an email into Areca now re: 1680 + CC1H ST31500341AS. I'll post here when they respond.
 
Last edited:
I have 8 x Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drives with CC1H running in a Areca 1680ix-24. Haven't had any issues so far.
 
how long have you been running them? have you checked the SMART stats to ensure nothing funny goes on with the drives whilst connected?
 
pgjensen said:
how long have you been running them? have you checked the SMART stats to ensure nothing funny goes on with the drives whilst connected?
Click to expand...

i've been running them since CC1H came out, or maybe a couple months? it's my backup array so i don't have heavy usage on it except once or twice a week when i back stuff up. i'll look through the SMART stats and see if anything looks weird.
 
thanks. already ordered 20 drives (CC1H) and the 1680ix-24 but don't have to open them yet until you confirm nothing quirky with SMART :)
 
I just got that controller but I'm using WD Black drives. Very fast. On 12 drives, im seeing about 900MB/s sustained.
 
i have had that cvontroller for awhile with 8 30 GB vertex drives, getting 1024 read on it..its a beast!
 
So cant use segate 1,5tb HDD with Areca ARC-1680ix when useing miniSAS to miniSAS cabels?

Where suppost to buy Norco 4220.


WTB WD 1,5TB black drives :p
 
houkouonchi said:
yeah its probably gonna only come with 4x miniSAS -> miniSAS and you will need to buy breakout cables. Buyer beware if you are going to use AS series segate drives with this controller (incase you don't already know about the issues).
Click to expand...


If dont read it wrong.

Need find out if can use 1,5TB segate drives with miniSAS to miniSAS in the Norco 4220 case
 
I used an ARC-1222 (also iop348) with the 1 TB CC1H firmware (i think it was) 333AS drives and so far its been knock on wood. The norco 4220 is on newegg for $350.
 
well i got my ARC-1680ix-24 and CC1H 1.5tb drives. seems to be just fine thus far. built a test raid6 with 4 drives and haven't had issues yet.
 
with that test setup i used encryption and it was maxed at 250MB/sec writes due to my CPU being maxed.
 
Mind testing expansion/rebuilds? If I remember correctly, that's when the issues arose.
 
i unplugged a device.

plugged it back in.

rebuilt successfully.



don't have it in front of me for another week or so to test expansion, and it's not something i'll ever use and won't have time to test that.

do you remember what part of the rebuild caused issues? because it seemed to work just fine?
 
Last edited:
i may have time to possibly test expansion on my set up, i got the 16 port version and have 8 Hitachi drives coming.
 
At the very least, my 3Ware is a lot faster in OCE and expansion than my old Adaptec was.

I should've just ponied up for an Areca when I first assembled my file server. :(

'Till next time, I guess. :)
 
pgjensen said:
well i got my ARC-1680ix-24 and CC1H 1.5tb drives. seems to be just fine thus far. built a test raid6 with 4 drives and haven't had issues yet.
Click to expand...

I'd be real careful with trusting any critical data to the CC1H on ARC-1680ix-24 without backup.. give it a few months at least.

I have tested 8 x CC1H (Raid6) on an ARC-1680ix-24 pretty extensively and one or more of the drives always fails. Besides just rebuilds (usually where it fails) I also test it with WInthrax, and that will usually cause an array failure if the drive completes a build or rebuild process.

It hasn't mattered whether I"ve done 4 drives, 6 drives or 8 drives in Raid6, it will always fail. There is an issue with the IOP348 chip that Intel has confirmed has a bug relating to the issue people are having, thus other controllers like the Adaptec 52445 have issues as well. Part of the problem is the IOP348 was designed for SAS with SATA as an overthought (and built a SATA <-> SAS translation layer) and combined with the supposedly slow processor Seagate put on the 1.5Tb's board, these problems are all happening.

With the same 8 x CC1H 1.5's attached to an Areca 1280ML, I cannot get the array to fail no matter what I do (Winthrax for 72 hours, etc).

Verdict: Areca 1680ix-24 is a top of the line card and I would hold onto that (I have two myself and absolutely love them attached to WD1001FALS 1Tb drives), but just be weary about the data you keep on the array since I haven't heard of anyone else having success with an IOP348 based high port count controller and the CC1H 1.5Tb drives.
 
when did you do these tests? i'm using a new 1680ix with 1.4.6 fw (jan 09) and drives with CC1H (shipped that way) and haven't had any issues yet.

did they fail when initializing? when idling? when doing xfers?



once my new array finished initializing and i test an OCE with drive #20, i'll run winthrax (or iometer) on it for 48 hours
 
I'd be interested in your finding pgjensen. Running a 1680ix-12 and playing around with 2 CC1Hs right now, thinking of using it for my backups. Since it's for backups... no big deal but I also don't want to deal with corruption/failed arrays all the live long day.
 
all was working well at first. it seems as though i'm getting some timeout errors on the drives and the raid fails. i turned off MAID and it still did it. all the times it's failed have been background initilization. foreground has worked, so i'll try that again.
 
Damn that's not promising. Wonder what our 1.5tb+ options will be. WE4-GPs don't seem to be in stock anywhere and the 2TB SAS drives aren't here yet.

Seagate does have the LP 2TB... but who knows, haven't seen anyone put those in an array either.
 
pgjensen said:
don't think anyone will pay $300 for a non-enterprise 2tb :)
Click to expand...
Meh, yeah. As a storage disk that has backups, maybe. Guess I'll have to wait until the RE4-GPs are in stock somewhere, currently being tested by Areca.

Or if Seagate's Constellation SAS drives are around the same price point... whenever Seagate gets around to releasing those.

Good thing this thread came out before I committed more CC1Hs to the array. So tempting at $119... Oh well, they become storage disks.
 
compatibility lists are always outdated from what i've seen in the past, so i never trust them (unless they say "NO" to a certain drive)

yeah i got my CC1H's as retail drives (5 year warranty) for $109 shipped each from frys.com a few weeks ago. said 1 per customer but i put in 20 and they shipped :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top