View Single Post - Mapower MAP-TB32 Dual SATA RAID Enclosure

isdfe5 · Rated PG

Hi All

I'm having a few problems with the MAPOWER TB32 enslosure usage. I have an ICH9DH Sata host controller and don;t seem to be able to use SAFE50 or SAFE33 or NORMAL modes. I know I can use SPAN and haven't yet tried RAID0/1 (the setup would take an age...).

I'm using 2 x 1.5Tb Samsung Eco-green drives in the enclosure. When I tried to use SAFE33 the setup went find (eventually ~ 6 hours or so). But when it was finished I could only see the SAFE volume via eSata connection, not the BIG volume. Bizarrely I also got a S.M.A.R.T. event showing up. To elimite the possibility of a possible problem with the disks (both brand new and unformatted) I put each into a known good working single drive enclosure. No problems. Also no problems when each drive in turn was the only drive in the enclosure and the mode was set to Normal.

I have concluded that the problem is that the Sata host is not PM aware? I have upgraded the driver software for the ICH9DH controller to version 8.9.0.1023, which I believe is the latest version and I had read implements support for Port Multipliers that was previously missing. This does not seem to be so - or at least it may implement command line Port multiplier support and the enclosure requires FIS port multiplier support? All of this is pure guesswork and I'd really appreciate any help/info about this.

If I am right as regards the port multiplier support what are my options to implement it, and would extra cards (if required) result in a reduction in speed?

Separately how can I tell what firmware the enclosure is running? (I assume updating this would not help with the above, but I am interested to know that I have the latest version). Is it worth running the Silver Mine app?

PART 2 - ADDED LATER

Hello Again

I have another problem now - don't know if it was always there, but I'm getting quite frustrated with this now. When I have both 1.5Tb drives in the enclosure it is showing a single drive (SPAN mode) in the Intel Matrix Storage Console of 2794.5Gb. However under the Disk Management plug in under the Storage Management section it shows only an unallocated drive of 746.53Gb. Also when I boot I get a Reset Port Error listed within the BIOS. I don't remember noticing this before, but that's not to say it wasn't there.

Please help - I really need it!

Thanks in advance
Chris Smile