Highpoint Rocketraid 2740 Woes

[jp-l33t]

Hello All!
I bought a High Point Rocketraid 2740 for pennies on Amazon. Had I known how much work it would be, I would have passed on the deal... I've been trying different builds for the past year and a half, with no success. Almost to the end of my rope here...
Fortunately, BSD includes drivers for the highpoint card now, so I don't have to try to build the driver module like I did before.
Anyway, I have the system assembled, running peachy, but hard disks attached to the controller are not showing up in storage anywhere. I got an error message finally late last night:

Code:

hpt27xx: 5 retrying failed, disk down!

Output of

Code:

camcontrol devlist -v
<>                                 at scbus0 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus1 on ata1 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus1 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus2 on ata2 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus2 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus3 on ata3 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus3 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus4 on ata4 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus4 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus5 on ata5 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus5 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus6 on ata6 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus6 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus7 on ata7 bus 0:                                                           
<>                                 at scbus7 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus8 on ctl2cam0 bus 0:                                                       
<>                                 at scbus8 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus9 on hpt27xx0 bus 0:                                                       
<>                                 at scbus9 target -1 lun -1 ()                
scbus10 on umass-sim0 bus 0:                                                    
<SanDisk Cruzer 8.02>              at scbus10 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,da0)        
scbus-1 on xpt0 bus 0:                                                          
<>                                 at scbus-1 target -1 lun -1 (xpt0)

with a single drive connected.
These are drives that at one time had something on them, so I know they don't need to be initialized or formatted, and I have checked all cables and power connections...
I'm at a loss... any help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance for any assistance.
-JP

 

[jp-l33t]

Quick Update:
I flashed the normal bios to the card (in early 2012 when I purchased it, there was a non-raid bios available) and tried looking at the drives as if I was going to hardware RAID them...
But the system hangs at the card bios... so the problem must not be so much in the OS, but in the card. I have a ticket open now with HPT... hopefully they can get this sorted out, though I'm not optimistic...

 

[cyberjock]

yeah.. good luck. I've had problems with HPT support. I asked a question 16 months ago.. still unanswered in their ticketing system!

My advice. Throw that junk away and go buy an M1015. You'll be crying every night when you go to sleep if you keep trying to get that HPT stuff to work with FreeBSD.

 

[jp-l33t]

The thing is, it's actually still under warranty... their warranty is 3 years, so if I can determine that the issue is the card, I'll hopefully be able to replace it (at their expense).
I'm following your posts on the highpoint thread and the first time setup for n00bs... hoping to whip this thing into shape... if not, I'm looking at an LSI 9201-16i right now... what are your thoughts on that card? I haven't RTFM so I could probably do a forum search, but while the master is around I figured I'd get input...
I'll keep you posted!

 

[cyberjock]

well, my advice is put it on a windows machine and see if it works. They seem to work fine in windows, but they are crap in FreeBSD. Just check out my sticky on them. Search the forums. Highpoint is a hot mess on FreeBSD. Period.

After you fix your POSTing problem of course. Even if you fix it, don't expect the card to work with FreeBSD.

 

[jp-l33t]

Yeah, the thing is, I think it's borked right now because it locks up during boot... If I had drives connected to it, I wouldn't even be able to boot into windows...

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

If you bought it for pennies then just toss the thing and get something that is known to work. It's really not worth the time and effort.

 

[jp-l33t]

Well, it wasn't actual pennies... it was tens of thousands of pennies... that's why I'm reluctant to just "toss" it... I don't plan on using this card in a production environment, just at my home. But the template will be used in my office very soon.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

If it's a template, my advice stands. Toss the bloody thing and get something that is known to work very very well.

 

[jp-l33t]

Well, Highpoint is RMAing he card. Fingers crossed that the replacement will work. In the mean time I'm going to snag and LSI 9201 16i, unless anyone has any objections.
The Highpoint card will either go to a Windows server or on ebay...

 

[cyberjock]

Well, Highpoint is RMAing he card. Fingers crossed that the replacement will work. In the mean time I'm going to snag and LSI 9201 16i, unless anyone has any objections.
The Highpoint card will either go to a Windows server or on ebay...

I object! Just kidding. It should work. Just make sure that it has a jbod mode and works with SMART before buying more for your templates. I'm 99% sure it is, bu there's one or two that don't.

Depending on how much that card costs you, you may be able to buy 2xM1015s for less.

Edit: Holy crap! You could be 3 M1015s for that price and still save money! $369.99 for the 9201-16i, or 2xM1015s at about $110 each from ebay! That second link is from hong kong. You can find some in the USA if you search ebay. I'm not sure where you are in the world.

 

[jp-l33t]

Yeah, I'm not comfy with the Hong Kong shipping timeframe, but again, I don't have space in this box for more than 1 card. Critical design flaw... This one stays at home, but the next one will probably be more flexible as far as the build... I was such a n00b when I started.
I ordered the LSI. $350 from Rakuten, free shipping. The LSI is an HBA, so it doesn't do anything but pass the drives to the host OS. No RAID setups to worry about. I'll make sure it has the latest bios loaded to the card when I get it and test from there. I don't have enough room in this build for 2 cards, but I'll keep the m1015s in mind for the next several... I plan on making a lot of them.
I'll update on the RocketRaid as well, once that gets returned to me.
Thanks for all the help! You guys rock!
-JP