This RAID Card is Terrible?

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EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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Sep 1, 2010
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I thought the idea was pretty simple... take a mini ITX board with embedded AMD APU and build myself a new NAS after the Drobo up and quit--seeing as though the drives I have are still good and usable. I picked up a used HighPoint RR 640L figuring it can't be that hard to set up but wow, what a small turd.

I originally wanted Ubuntu on this setup but after looking over the terrible documentation on how to set it all up I quickly moved to Windows 10. Everything seemed good but I couldn't get the driver to install or start properly; turned out that I needed to flash the RAID card, fine. Drivers installed no problem after that but for whatever reason the damn thing doesn't "see" any of my 2TB WD red drives... at all.

I've even tried Windows 7 and it's the same deal. Drivers install and card is set up but there's no physical drives listed in the WebGUI. I've tried other drives too, and the result is the same. Either there is something in their shoddy documentation that I am clearly missing or the card itself is just junk. It's nuts; I might as well just shell out the money for a brand new 4-bay NAS.

Tried different cables too btw... any thoughts on this?
 
mxnerd

mxnerd

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Used Dell RAID cards are better than any new RAID cards based on Marvell chips.

Just avoid Marvell based RAID cards. Yes, they are terrible.

Marvell controller chips are like Reatek network chips, the only good thing is cheap.

Manufacturers using low cost chips very likely don't do quality control vigorously and you got a bad adapter.

==

Oops, just saw you bought a used card. Then it's even more likely it's a bad one. :D

==

Why do you need to flash the card? From what to what?
 
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EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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Yea I figured it would be alright for just file storage and I didn't need a booting array but I could not have been more wrong. I'd much rather use a Dell/LSI controller but most are SAS and I didn't want to have to use adapters. In hindsight though, if that had worked I would be ahead of where I am now lol.

I'm going to go digging through our old server graveyard and see if I can source a test adapter to see if I can even get this to work like I want.
 
EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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To clarify: the webGUI detects the Marvell controller (RR640L) but doesn't list any physical drives...

The documentation all suggests that the RAID card's BIOS should appear but I don't see anything at POST, even if I strike CTRL+H like it instructs to.
 
mxnerd

mxnerd

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Try disabling fast boot and enabling delay for HDD option in motherboard's BIOS?
 
EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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mxnerd said:
Try disabling fast boot and enabling delay for HDD option in motherboard's BIOS?
Click to expand...

good idea, though I think the drives all spin up within a few seconds already before the board POSTs but I will double check.

Charlie22911 said:
What exact card do you have? Chipset?
Click to expand...

it's this one: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600-overview.htm
RR640L-b.jpg

RocketRAID 640L

I flashed to the latest BIOS (RAID v1.5) which let me install the drivers under Windows 10 but I haven't seen the card's BIOS at POST yet. I'm going to see if maybe the motherboard has a BIOS update as well--perhaps with some revised compatibility.
 
Charlie22911

Charlie22911

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Mar 19, 2005
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EXCellR8 said:
good idea, though I think the drives all spin up within a few seconds already before the board POSTs but I will double check.



it's this one: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600-overview.htm
RR640L-b.jpg

RocketRAID 640L

I flashed to the latest BIOS (RAID v1.5) which let me install the drivers under Windows 10 but I haven't seen the card's BIOS at POST yet. I'm going to see if maybe the motherboard has a BIOS update as well--perhaps with some revised compatibility.
Click to expand...

I've experienced POST issues with my 3 LSI controllers when they were flashed with Legacy BIOS firmware instead of EFI\UEFI compatible firmware. Check to make sure your boot mode is set to Legacy or Legacy\UEFI.

EDIT: I don't see an EFI\UEFI firmware option for anything but Mac. Odd. Changing boot setting to Legacy may be the best way to get into the card and see if something is preventing it from initializing the drives.
 
X

XavierMace

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Apr 20, 2013
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Which BIOS are you flashing? The bootable or non-bootable? If you're flashing the non-bootable BIOS, you aren't going to see the cards BIOS at POST.
 
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EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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That's where I'm confused. There's a RAID bios which I flashed and then a "Quick BIOS" that you can load into the webGUI. Somewhere in the shoddily-written manual I read to load the non-bootable firmware if you wanted just the data storage (which I do, OS is on a separate disk) but I assumed that the webGUI would still detect the drives if the system booted straight to Windows?

It's mega-confusing; I'm typically actually pretty good at this stuff...
 
EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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Charlie22911 said:
I've experienced POST issues with my 3 LSI controllers when they were flashed with Legacy BIOS firmware instead of EFI\UEFI compatible firmware. Check to make sure your boot mode is set to Legacy or Legacy\UEFI.

EDIT: I don't see an EFI\UEFI firmware option for anything but Mac. Odd. Changing boot setting to Legacy may be the best way to get into the card and see if something is preventing it from initializing the drives.
Click to expand...

The EFI rom for the card is packaged up with the "Quick BIOS" files here
 
mxnerd

mxnerd

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EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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okay so I had to disable quiet boot in order to use the card's BIOS utility...

except it still doesn't see any drives attached and states that there are "no usable drives" after the scan. what a piece of trash... even tried a different power supply and cables.
 
dave_the_nerd

dave_the_nerd

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Feb 25, 2011
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Sounds like you bought a broken card. I would just buy an off-the-shelf SATA card for, like, 35 bucks or so, and use software raid. It's more idiot proof.
 
EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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problem is this board is only PCIe 2.0 x4 which reduces my choices quite a bit

software RAID increasingly appealing, i will say that.
 
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mxnerd

mxnerd

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PCIe 2.0 x4 bandwidth is 500MB/s x4 = 2000MB/s, plenty for HDD.

You can flash H310 to IT mode then use it with software RAID,
e.g. FreeNAS if that's what you want.

==

According to Highpoint 6xx series controller specs, they are PCIe 2.0 x4 adapters, but only x2 electrical, meaning 640L maximum bandwidth is half of x4 slot and it's only 1000MB/s.

==
Oops, wrong again. H310 is actually a PCIe 2.0 x8 controller, so bandwidth should be 4GB/s :D

That's eight times the bandwidth what 640L can offer.

http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/...heets/Documents/dell-perc-h310-spec-sheet.pdf
 
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B

Billy Tallis

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Aug 4, 2015
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EXCellR8 said:
problem is this board is only PCIe 2.0 x4 which reduces my choices quite a bit
Click to expand...

PCIe 3 controller cards will work just fine in PCIe 2 slots. If your problem is that most controller cards you're finding are x8 cards, then just cut open the end of your x4 slot so that the longer card can fit. It'll automatically drop down to operating with just x4 lanes when that's all that it is connected to. Most server boards that include shorter slots like x4 or x1 use open-ended connectors, but it's less common on consumer boards.
 
EXCellR8

EXCellR8

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yea it's not a server board, and it's an ITX with only the one PCIe x4 slot.

sent the card back anyway though, wasn't even being detected anymore, junk.
 
mxnerd

mxnerd

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Use a Dremel tool to cut open mini ITX PCIe x 4 slot so DELL PERC H310 can fit.

Like the video below.

 
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