Gigabyte I-RAM (GC-RAMDISK) incompatible with 3ware 9500

The Gigabyte I-RAM card is a battery backed solid state memory device impersonating a very fast SATA 1 disk drive. We found that our 3ware 9500s-4lp didn't recognize the I-RAM version 1.3 device plugged into it. This is apparent long before the OS has booted - the 3ware card has its own pre-boot BIOS setup which lists the drives found. The I-RAM drive is never found, although other SATA drives are. So the problem seems to be a lack of compatibility of the controller and the "drive". This was a surprise, since both items work well with all other partners we have tried.

We solved the problem by replacing the 3ware card with an inexpensive Highpoint RocketRaid 1640 card.

This all happened on an HP ML370 G4 running FreeBSD 6.0, however we don't think that is relevant as the 3ware and Gigabyte cards are connected by a SATA data cable which doesn't depend on the host computer. The HP has no motherboard SATA support. While the I-RAM does plug into a PCI slot, this is apparently for power only, not data or control.

Additional comments on the IRAM are posted here The Gigabyte website doesn't say what is the current version of the product, but we haven't found anything later than 1.3 mentioned on a website. Neither 3ware nor Gigabyte mention the other on their own websites.

Daniel Feenberg
2 January 2007