No SMART info for drives connected to Areca RAID

Sob

New Member
I have three different Areca RAID controllers:
  • ARC-1203 (SATA-only, still listed as supported by manufacturer) - I'm mainly interested in this one
  • ARC-1680 (SAS/SATA, discontinued)
  • ARC-1210 (SATA-only, discontinued)
According to an old thread (https://www.hwinfo.com/forum/thread...areca-controller-any-chance-hwinfo-will.2589/), some support for accessing SMART info on Areca controllers was added in the past (SATA-only ones were mentioned as possibly not working). I have no luck with all three, they all behave the same way. I see them as PCIe devices. Individual volumes are listed as SCSI disks (and always show nonsense 30°C temperature that doesn't correspond with anything). There's also "RAID DummyDevice", but nothing under it. Accessing SMART for individual drives works fine using smartctl (smartctl.exe --all --device=areca,1/1 /dev/arcmsr0).

If it would help, then in addition to debug logs, I could also (for next ~2 weeks, then I'll need to use the hardware elsewhere) provide remote access to testing PC with connected controller (any of them, one at a time).
 

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It looks very good, I can see all disks. There are some other possible improvements left, but I'm already happy. :)

One cosmetic thing, a disk decided to briefly die, then came back, but it was already out of array as unassigned. It shows on same level as controller, but it should be probably under it, on same level as "RAID Array #0".

Other things I noticed:

ARC-1203:

Controller Host Interface: PCI (it's PCI Express)
Controller Target Interface: SAS (it's probably reported incorrectly by controller, because it shows as SAS also in own web interface)
Number of IDE Channels: 8 (there are only 4, because it's -4i version; perhaps it's also reported incorrectly, but web interface shows 4 correctly)

Enclosure #2 (I don't think there are that many, especially since you seem to be counting things from zero)
Enclosure Name: ARECA SATA RAID Contro (it's cut off)
Enclosure Revision: ller (and rest is here)
Number of Disks: 0 (wrong)
Number of Voltages: 8 (these actually exist, but I don't see them anywhere in HWiNFO)
Number of Temperatures: 2 (same as voltages)

ARC-1680:

Number of Enclosures: 8 (web interface shows 2)

Enclosure #1
Number of Disks: 8 (8 is maximum, connected are 3, I don't know what should be here)
Number of Voltages: 0 (there are also some)
Number of Fans: 0 (same, but it doesn't show speed even in own interface)
Number of Temperatures: 0 (same)
 

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Thanks for the feedback, great to see that it works.
Most of the issues you've seen come from the driver (e.g. Host/Target interface, etc..)
Another problem is that the Areca interface is proprietary and what we were able to understand and retrieve so far is all we have. So if Areca changed/updated the interface, we don't have the latest information. I will look into this and try to improve it but not sure how much I'll be able to do...
 
Thank you for the fix, it's already big difference.

As mentioned before, would it help if you had access to it? I mean RDP, admin rights, install and test anything you'd need, without waiting for me to provide logs. Only hardware should survive, software wouldn't matter. No pressure, only if it would be interesting for you too. After all, this hardware is probably relatively rare, so not many other users would appreciate if you add better support for it.
 
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