Software RAID creation issue

[cyberygan]

We are using Supermicro X7SBi M/B, Pentium E2160, 1GB RAM, 4 Seagate 500GB SATA. We created software RAID5, after that, MD0 status shows,

RAID LEVEL RAID5
Creation time Mon Jan 21 01:30:41 2008
Update time Mon Jan 21 01:39:01 2008
Array size 1397.28 GB
Device size 465.76 GB
Layout left-symmetric
Chunk size 256K
State active, resyncing
Time left 11004.3min
Speed 737K/sec
Recovering 0.1%

Is it normal? Almost 200 hours to go?

[To-M]

No this is not normal something is either wrong with the drives, cables or bios settings.

[cyberygan]

All hardware are new, no RAID mode is set in BIOS, plain SATA only. GUI shows all 4 HDD with S/N. Is it possible that ICH9R is not properly supported? It's quite new.
Thanks Todd for the prompt respond. You don't seem having an exciting weekend.

[To-M]

Ya, tell me about it, I should be doing other things..... but sometimes if I can help I will .
We do support ICH9R, if you are not using the built in RAID controller (which we do not support onboard RAID controllers) you may have to play with the motherboard settings, try SATA mode to Enhanced mode.

[cyberygan]

I think I should report back. I first ran SeaTools to make sure all HDDs are good. They all passed tests. Then I messed with BIOS settings a bit, it was in default settings. I tried to enable the SATA ACHI mode, after the boot, LITE can't find any units, rescan didn't help. I disabled the SATA AHCI, still no units. Even after I reset the BIOS to default, no units.
I then tried to enable the Intel software RAID with Intel codebase (another option is Adaptec codebase), but I didn't congifure RAID in Intel RAID BIOS. After the boot, all units showed up in S/W RAID Setup page, and even resumed resyncing that I interrupted. But now at a faster speed, which is around 60000K/sec, showing time left 120min. Is this speed normal? But this whole thing still sounds strange. Is there a recommended SATA setting mode?

[To-M]

Others have reported with approx 72000K/sec (but very good drives, mem and CPU). Maybe others can supply some perf. values with SATA in "ENHANCED" modes.