freebsd stable - Apr 2011 - drives >2TB on mpt device

Hi all,

I have a freshly installed 8.2-REL with a SuperMicro AOC-USASLP-L8i
controller (LSI/MPT 1068E chipset). I have several of these controllers
working nicely in other systems.
However, this time I tried drives >2TB for the first time (Hitachi
Deskstar 3TB). It appears that the mpt device reports only 2TB in this
case. I have already flashed the controller's firmware to the latest
available version (from 2009), but that did not change anything. The drive
is working fine on the standard SATA connectors on the mainboard
(Supermicro H8DME-2) and reports 2.8TB there.
Are there any hints how to access the full drive? Am I seeing a limitation
of the controller/firmware or rather of the driver (mpt)?


cu
  Gerrit

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 15:07:01 +0200
Gerrit K?hn <gerrit@pmp.uni-hannover.de> wrote:
> Are there any hints how to access the full drive? Am I seeing a
> limitation of the controller/firmware or rather of the driver (mpt)?
It looks like a known issue:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=bin/147572

-- 
Bruce Cran

On Mon, 4 Apr 2011 07:37:15 -0700 Artem Belevich <art@freebsd.org> wrote
about Re: drives >2TB on mpt device:

AB> You're probably out of luck as far as 2Tb+ support for 1068-based
HBAs:
AB> http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle16399.aspx
AB> 
AB> Newer controllers based on LSI2008 (mps driver?) should not have that
AB> limit.

For the record:
My latest info from Supermicro is that the chip would do above 2TB with
SAS drives, but doesn't do it with SATA...

However, I changed to a 3ware 9650se controller now. I had to flash a beta
firmware to get 2.8GB recognized on the drives, but now it seems to work.
Only the twa device/controller responds with a reset when trying to do "zdb
-C"... strange. But apart from that the drives seem to work fine, even
with zfs.

To sum up what I experienced during the last days: all "cheap"
controllers
I tried (nvidia mcp55 onboard, SiI 3124) work fine out-of-the-box. All
expensive, scsi-like stuff (3ware 9650, lsi) needs at least firmware
updates or does not work (meaning shows either 2TB, 800GB or does not work
at all). For my "old" 3ware 9550 controllers there is not even a beta
firmware available to fix the problem. :-(


cu
  Gerrit