XigmaNAS

Posted: **19 Jun 2014 15:31**

Hello,
i'm having a conundrum here:
i've setup n4f in a ICH7 motherboard, now the information page says "Intel ICH7 SATA300 controller".
the HDD themselves are SATA3 capable(WD RED): SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 3.0 Gb/s)
see that it says it's 3Gbps
but kernel log shows:

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nas: ~ # dmesg | grep SATA
atapci0: <Intel ICH7 SATA300 controller> port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xf000-0xf00f at device 31.2 on pci0
ada0: <WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 80.00A80> ATA-9 SATA 3.x device
ada0: 150.000MB/s transfers (SATA, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)
ada1: <WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 80.00A80> ATA-9 SATA 3.x device
ada1: 150.000MB/s transfers (SATA, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)

doing a quick DD to a ZFS pool(empty) shows transfer not higher than 134MB/s(very suspicious, that's the practical ceiling for SATA1).
since there's no hdparm in freebsd i can't run the cache benchmark there.
i did ran a quick diskinfo with the output:

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nas: ~ # diskinfo -t /dev/ada0
Transfer rates:
        outside:       102400 kbytes in   0.765442 sec =   133779 kbytes/sec
        middle:        102400 kbytes in   0.827139 sec =   123800 kbytes/sec
        inside:        102400 kbytes in   1.565421 sec =    65414 kbytes/sec

Again that 133MB/s ceiling (i know these drives can go higher).

so what's going on and how can i force SATA II correctly and benchmark the cache?

Posted: **19 Jun 2014 16:36**

for the ich7 there are some revisions which offer AHCI capability, others which offer AHCI and RAID, and others which offer none of these.
Does your board support AHCI?

Posted: **19 Jun 2014 16:41**

AFAIK no, it has no RAID nor AHCI, at least no AHCI option in BIOS (it's a i945 board), only config is "compatible/enhanced/separate" to deal with pata/sata combo and controller order.

but why the discrepancies in the smartctl output?, the name of the controller "sata 300" i can understand probably based on a pci-id to text string somewhere

Posted: **19 Jun 2014 22:40**

With that chipset I've had poor performance with compatible and better with enhanced. But the implementation of the chipset by the motherboard maker is key.

Posted: **20 Jun 2014 12:54**

if it does not have ahci i dont think you can use the sata 2 mode

Posted: **12 Jul 2014 07:26**

is that a Linux or BSD limitation?.
because under windows you dont need AHCI to use full 3Gbps speeds.

i'm having the same issue now with an Intel G31 MB that also has an ICH7 (82801GB) and no AHCI in BIOS(it's not ICH7R)

XigmaNAS

SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

Re: SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

Re: SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

Re: SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

Re: SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?

Re: SATA at 150MB on ICH7 ?