HDS stuck on Areca ARC-1880 RAID controller, will not start

[izx]

**Reposting with ZIP of testmode, RAID TXT files attached, sorry**

I have an Areca ARC-1880i RAID controller (8 ports), which is on the supported list. Connected to the RAID controller is an Intel RES2SV240 24-port expander, to which are connected various hard drives as RAID volume sets. I tried the regular HDSentinel as well as the latest beta, and both versions appear to get stuck obtaining information about the RAID drives -- the GUI never shows up and in Task Manager, you can see the I/O Other Bytes of HDSentinel.exe slowly increasing.

The Intel expander uses the standard LSI chip used in higher-port-count Areca, LSI, IBM, Dell, etc. controllers. The Areca controller is using the latest firmware (1.52) and latest STORPORT driver. Information for all drives can be accessed using the Areca CLI as well as smartctl.

I re-ran HDSentinel.exe with the ENABLETEST, RAID and REPORT options. No report was generated (terminated the process after about 5-7 minutes), but I'm attaching the testmode.txt and RAID.txt files to debug this issue. I'd love to help solve the problem since it's quite likely this arises on RAID controllers with built-in expanders too.

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and the files!

I examined the files and it seems that the detection starts and some partial information detected - but then the controller no longer responds, no further answers received about the drives. This is why the software seems frozen - as it is still waiting for response.

To be honest, the Areca-specific detection made long time ago and due to driver / firmware changes (and because some users already reported issues) I planned to examine, modify, adjust (or even re-write). This would require longer time, so it is planned after the release of the 4.70 version coming soon. After that, new beta versions will be surely available designed specifically for Areca controllers.

Thanks for increasesing attention and your patience!

[izx]

Hi Janos,

Thank you for the reply. I recently ran HDSentinel again, and it just seems that the API used to the query the Areca controller is extremely slow. After about ~26 minutes, HDSentinel starts up and shows all the drives. I will upload the logs when I get home.

However, upon attempting to run a read-only surface test on one (pass-through) drive connected to the controller, it quite literally froze (not responding). The drive is known-good. More problematic, is that after this (attempting the surface test), the Areca controller command interface also froze -- the CLI would not detect the controller, and it couldn't be accessed over the web interface, although there appeared to be no problems with actual disk activity in the background. It took two reboots (the controller has a battery backup) before the CLI/web interface became available again.

I will soon have a spare Areca controller which I can put in a test machine with no critical data arrays attached. Please let me know if you need any help troubleshooting betas, etc. I should also have an LSI 9260-8i which could help with comparison.

[sidharth]

I have the same issue. All my drives are accessed through the Areca 1882 card, except the OS drive. The HDSentinel process takes up about 30 Mb in the "Other I/O Bytes" column. It takes about 10-15 minutes and then the GUI shows up, however it freezes if you attempt to access any of the drives.

Also the Areca HTTP process freezes and stops by itself (it is a windows service at start up).

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and excuse me for the troubles.
I can confirm that at the moment, working on the Areca-specific detection. Due to some similar issues reported recently, it is completely re-written and this is the highest priority now.
An updated version will be released for testing soon.

Thanks for your patience.

[hdsentinel]

I can confirm that an updated version with improved ARECA support released:

http://www.hdsentinel.com/beta4/hdsenti ... -sdeeq.zip

Please try it and let me know the experiences.
Tested with different SATA and SAS Areca controllers, all drives detected and displayed correctly.
The best would be if you can use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option with it. Also you may notice an areca.txt file created by this version in the folder of the software, if you can send it in e-mail to info @ hdsentinel . com (plus the developer report) these would help to verify the situation, confirm if things are working correctly as should. But if something is still not perfect, these would help to check and verify the possibilities.

Thanks for your patience!