Corsair 800D sata backplane + raid = no dice

Hi,

 

Just wanted to post here and let anyone in a similar situation to me know about this issue.

 

If you try to run 4x1TB SATA 6Gbps 7200rpm drives in Raid 10 or Raid 5. It seems that if you have 4 drives powered at the same time, the backplane simply can't power all of them. The drive in slot 1 drops out consistently, every time the array is spun up. You probably won't have this problem if you run 4 drives independently (i.e. not in a raid array), but that sort of defeats the purpose of a hotswap backplane altogether.

 

Removing the backplane solves the issue. I thought I may have had a bad backplane, but I got a replacement from Corsair and it ended up producing the exact same result. I even spent money getting my motherboard replaced thinking I may have a bad sata port, but in the end it turned out to be the poor design of the backplane. There simply isn't enough power going through it if you're running 4 drives at once.

 

I'm going to get some short cables and some sata power extensions so that I can route the cables out the side of the case like the backplane was supposed to do. It's disappointing to say the least, but it's better than not being able to use the majority of the 800D's hard drive space.

 

In the future, Corsair should redesign the backplane or not design it in at all. Pass-through connectors would be a far better solution to this, and I'm not sure why that wasn't done in the first place.

the backplane issue rears its ugly head once again. tho most reports seem to be with sata3 ssd. u having an issue with platter hd is another knock on what appears to be poor design &/or qc on corsairs part.

problems have been occurring with this since release of the case it seems corsair is unable or worse, unwilling to deal with this- aside from sending u another backplane wich can just replicate you problems.

there are suggestions for possible fixes in the forums. at a minimum corsair should combine, sticky and comment on which work & which dont. an actual update besides the standard 'we are working on it' that has been used for several months now would be helpful to.

sorry none of this is helpful for your problem. at this point the best u can do is bypass the backplane-seems to be the common fix - & of course loose the functionality that u paid for.

imo there are really only to possible problems here - bad pcb design/layout and/or the connectors dont have enough metal to make a durable, good connection. no expert by any stretch, just seems like common sense to me:)

I really think the main problem with the backplane is that it has one power connector per 4 drives. I don't know if the power is just routed poorly or what, but it seems to be because if I create the array and don't touch it in windows at all, then there are no problems (but the array is not usable, obviously). As soon as there is any accessing of the array (i.e. all 4 drives spin up) drive in slot 1 (the one next to the power connector) drops out -- every time.

 

I spent over $50 on 1 foot sata power extensions, 10" sata 3 cables, and a cable sleeving kit. I'm not going to waste any more of my time or Corsairs troubleshooting this problem. I noticed that their old design (sata 2?) was 4 individual backplane pieces (this is shown in the picture on the box!) each with their own power connector. I'm sure this design worked perfectly fine, but in an effort to save a few pennies on the cables/pcbs they decided to combine everything into one (very) faulty pcb.

 

Disappointing, considering the price AND the quality of the rest of the case.

didnt know that about the sata2 backplane. that could explain a lot of the problems. if that is THE problem it is a shame that corsair isnt fixing it- sure it is not cost effective for them to sesign & contract out the build for a comparitively few unhappy customers.