Hello list(s), After all it turned out that the HighPoint controller was buggy. When we later configured it in RAID5 mode, it reported drive faults for random drives that were OK. I don't get how/why it worked in geom stripe mode. Anyway, we switched to a 3ware card and ZFS works happily with it out of the box without any kernel tuning (I may do some fine-tuning later).
So, I'm sorry for suspecting ZFS, and thanks to Pawel for maintaining it! However, seems like that there are other people, like Tim and Dan, who are having a similar problem, but without noticeable hardware relation. Maybe there is something to be learnt from their input. Sorry for the noise and thanks again, -- Sergey Zaharchenko
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