SOLVED Can HBA SATA controller be replaced by LSI9201-16i without formatting?

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HeinzApfel

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Hi,

I have an ASRock C2550D4I which is giving me plenty of SATA timeouts leading to incorrect ZFS checksums.
Therefore I would like to replace the onboard SATA controller by a LSI9201-16i.

Question: Can the initialized zpool be used on the LSI without reformatting? E.g. does the LSI store structures on the disk array which may violate my zpool?

Thanks,
Heinz
 

depasseg

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Is the 9201 in IT mode?
 

cyberjock

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The LSI stores structures if you had to initialize the drive on the controller to use it, or setup a hardware RAID. Assuming you are using appropriate hardware and settings neither of those should have been done and the disks should move without a problem.
 

Ericloewe

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AFAIK, the 9201 only supports IT mode, so it should be ok. However, it's less popular and less tested, and as such may have weird bugs. Make sure it's flashed to P16 firmware, in any case.
 

pjc

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Mine works fine so far.
 

depasseg

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AFAIK, the 9201 only supports IT mode, so it should be ok. However, it's less popular and less tested, and as such may have weird bugs. Make sure it's flashed to P16 firmware, in any case.
I didn't know that. :smile:
 

HeinzApfel

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AFAIK, the 9201 only supports IT mode, so it should be ok. However, it's less popular and less tested, and as such may have weird bugs. Make sure it's flashed to P16 firmware, in any case.
Hi,

I received a 9201-16i today and it contains firmware P17. Lastest is P20.
So I tried to flash P16, but sas2flash does not allow to downgrade.

Question: Can P17 or later also been used with FreeNAS 9.3 or is the a special need to match P16?

Thanks,
Heinz
 

Ericloewe

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Hi,

I received a 9201-16i today and it contains firmware P17. Lastest is P20.
So I tried to flash P16, but sas2flash does not allow to downgrade.

Question: Can P17 or later also been used with FreeNAS 9.3 or is the a special need to match P16?

Thanks,
Heinz

You need to erase the firmware first. It's more or less the same procedure as crossflashing. Then you can flash what you want (P16).
 

HeinzApfel

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Thanks, that helped.

First, to answer my above question concerning the replacement: Yes, it can be replaced.
I replaced two zpool that where created on an ASRock C2250D4I with onboard Marvell controllers by a LSI 9201-16i controller. The controller was flashed to P16 IT-Mode.
The data on the disks is OK. A scrub ran well over it. There are some tweaks to be done as the disk devices change from "ada" to "da". It's a good idea to save the configuration and export the zpool before the controller ist replaced.

Second, I had some problems downgrading from P17 to P16. Under DOS the SAS2FLSH programs brings an error message like "PAL can not be initialized". Using SAS2FLASH on Windows brings an error like "FLASH erase not supported on this controller". Therefore I placed the EFI version of SAS2FLASH together with the Firmware onto an USB-stick and booted into the EFI-shell. After that erasing the FLASH with "-o -e 6" and programming the P16 firmware using "-f firmware.bin" worked well.
I only flashed the firmware as I don't want to boot from one drive and don't want to wait for BIOS initialization at boot time.

Thanks for all of your help,
Heinz
 

pjc

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I only flashed the firmware as I don't want to boot from one drive and don't want to wait for BIOS initialization at boot time.
Interesting, I didn't realize you could do that. Does everything still work? (And can you flash the BIOS later?)

I also ended up having to use UEFI to downgrade.
 

Ericloewe

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Interesting, I didn't realize you could do that. Does everything still work? (And can you flash the BIOS later?)

I also ended up having to use UEFI to downgrade.

Everything should work - in fact, it's one less thing that can cause trouble (some time ago, a guy had an M1015 and an LSI SAS 2308, both with boot ROMs - the 2308 didn't work until the boot ROMs were erased).
 
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