Duplidisk S-ATA RAID controller dies on review table

"IT'S THE FIRST TIME this happens to me, honest". The nice folks at ARCO Data Protection Systems improved on the legendary "DupliDisk" RAID controllers by creating a Serial ATA version. I reviewed the DupliDisk 3 here on the INQ (in "Parallel ATA" flavour) some time ago.

This round, I suddenly realized it was time to take a long overdue look at their $259 Serial ATA version.

"Flexmount", Serial-ATA Duplidisk 3 from ARCO, and two really affordable 80GB SATA Western Digital drives I purchased from Amazon.com

The SATA version ships in a convenient "Flexmount" external enclosure, which is designed to be attached to the side of desktop computers with the conveniently included velcro strips. It sports the same features that made the parallel-ATA versions legendary, loud buzzer when a disk fails, RS232 based monitoring, totally OS-independent operation (the unit fakes a single hard disk to the OS while mirroring the data on the two connected drives), and since my DD3 PATA version, they have even created a Linux version of their GUI configuration utility, in case the "software free" setup process hitting a button and watching LED colour changes scares you.

Everything worked as intended, the two drives were recognized, I initiated the "mirroring" and the process completed successfully. I had both drives working in "mirrored" mode. I also tested a simulated "drive failure"" by unplugging one of the SATA drives from the power connector while the OS was booting, the unit's buzzer started its loud beep, but the OS continued booting unaffected.

I was ready to give the unit the maximum score. That is, until I decided it was time to also include screenshots of the Linux utility. I headed to ARCO's Tech Support section and found that the latest firmware ( v7.05) addressed a compatibility issue with Linux - "Modified Firmware to recognize the fixed hard drive during Linux Fedora Core # 2 installation". Even while I don't run Fedora, I wanted to be safe when booting Sun's JDS Linux R2 on it.

I fired the Windows Duplidisk utility, saw that the "Firmware update" tab was not greyed out as the first time I ran it (before the drives were mirrored and "live"), and then, proceeded to follow the on-screen instructions, as instructed by the firmware page ("SATA FlexMount firmware upgrade can be performed either via Arco's Windows utility or via a serial port"). As you can see in the screenshots below, the process worked fine -albeit very slowly- until a dialog informed me that the process "completed successfully", and I was instructed to power cycle the unit. After a power cycle, the unit essentially was DEAD. The LEDs on the PCI bracket went off, and the unit no longer even beeps when power is connected to it.

After the reboot and power cycling, the unit turned into a brick

I have now contacted the Arco DPS tech support folks, and when I hear from them, you'll read about it here on the INQ. Chances are they'll have to ship me a new EPROM, or exchange the unit. Believe me, the unit worked great even with the shipped ancient firmware, I just wanted to update it to the latest just in case it affected performance scores. I hope I'm able to resurrect this unit and do the final performance measurements - with the latest firmware.

All that was still pending in my review at the time of the decease (and it had to happen in MY review table!) - was to re-do the performance measurements -using Passmark Performance Test- with the unit in RAID mode, to see if it affected performance (compared to the same drive connected directly).

In the meantime, caveat emptor . I learned the hard way that firmware updates to the DD3 SATA CAN go wrong, even while the Windows updater tells you everything worked dandy. µ