Can't see all my drives

[Mirfster]

So, I went ahead and downloaded the P20 and BIOS with the 4/5/16 date and installed those on both cards. Again, I'm only seeing 7 of the 13 drives and the only drives that are showing are the WD Red drives. Could be a problem then with the firmware on the other 6 drives I guess??? I may have to see if there is a firmware update for these.

Possible, worth a shot at least.

Maybe try P19. But even if that works I would be concerned since you do really want to be running P20 (thinking at least 20.00.04.00). These cards didn't happen to come cheaply from an eBay Seller shipping from China did they? ;)

 

[Brian Blater]

Nah you should be fine; since you did not wipe the card. If concerned, just run:

From within FreeNAS (or via Putty):
sas2flash -c 0 -list and look for the "SAS Address" entry to verify your card has one.

Could also do sas2flash -c 0 -list | grep "SAS Address" to just grab that line from the output

For from within DOS:
sas2flsh -c 0 -list and look for the "SAS Address" entry to verify your card has one

*** Note: I used "-c 0" in my examples to select card number zero. Since you have two cards, you would also want to run the commands with "-c 1" to check the other card.

I went ahead and did the -sasadd however, it didn't change the outcome.

I'm starting to think I have hard drives with old enough firmware that the Avago BIOS upgrade doesn't support or something. All the hard drives that are missing are the Hitachi Ultrastar A7K1000 drives. All my WD Reds show up.

Unfortunately Hitachi does not post a firmware download for these drives and searching the internet doesn't provide me with any concrete results (I'm not going to flash it with some unverified tool and firmware from some "Billy Bob" website.)

 

[Brian Blater]

Possible, worth a shot at least.

Maybe try P19. But even if that works I would be concerned since you do really want to be running P20 (thinking at least 20.00.04.00). These cards didn't happen to come cheaply from an eBay Seller shipping from China did they? ;)

Well, they did come from eBay, but on things like this I try to limit my searching to North America :D

 

[Ericloewe]

Ah, so only one of the models has been affected.

P20 has been notorious for breaking all sorts of old stuff. SATA 1.5Gb/s HDDs, the occasional random model/firmware...

You could try your luck and email the manufacturer asking if they have a firmware update. I'll leave figuring out who to contact in the messy world of HDD manufacturer acquisitions, mergers and spinoffs as an exercise for the reader...

 

[Brian Blater]

I've sent a request to Hitachi support (not sure if it will get me a firmware upgrade or not).

Obviously my goal here is to get to P20 so I can run 9.10. I was hoping to upgrade these Hitachi's to some Seagate 3/4TB NAS drives, but at $115 to $150 a piece and wanting 8, that's going to take some taking with the wife about :)

I'm not giving up yet as I will download P19 and try it. Then if needs be and I don't get the Hitachi firmware, I may have to stay on 9.3.1 until I can get new drives. :(

 

[Mirfster]

Only other thing I can think of is to issue a reset command to the cards. However, I have never had to do this personally, so am not speaking from experience.

Per the documentation:

Use the Reset All command to issue a diagnostic reset to all controllers supported in
the system, which resets the chip hardware, where complete chip information is
reinitialized. This process includes the following operations:

• Moves a new firmware image from the firmware backup location to the current firmware location
• Migrates the NVDATA changes
• Runs the new firmware

Syntax:
SAS2Flash –o –resetall

I do think that this is automatically done where the card is successfully updated anyways so YMMV.

I agree that it is weird it only doesn't see the HGST drives. I run pretty much all HGST and haven't had this issue ever. But, I use all Perc H200s that have been cross-flashed and not IBM M1015s...

 

[Brian Blater]

Only other thing I can think of is to issue a reset command to the cards. However, I have never had to do this personally, so am not speaking from experience.

Per the documentation:


I do think that this is automatically done where the card is successfully updated anyways so YMMV.

I agree that it is weird it only doesn't see the HGST drives. I run pretty much all HGST and haven't had this issue ever. But, I use all Perc H200s that have been cross-flashed and not IBM M1015s...

Yeah, I think it is the BIOS and Firmware on the IBM M1015s. I tried P19 and same situation.

I've had decent success with the HGST drives as I have another FreeNAS running 9.10 on a ASRock C2550D4I with the same HGST drives and it is working fine. The problem on that one was getting a good motherboard :)

I'm going to put it back to P16 for now and hopefully get the NFS volume working again and let that ride for a little while. Then I'll figure out what to do for HDDs - WD Reds, Seagate NAS or ???

Can you give me a little more info on your Perc H200s you use and how you cross-flashed them and to what? I may want to consider different boards since the IBMs are getting harder to find.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Mirfster]

Can you give me a little more info on your Perc H200s you use and how you cross-flashed them and to what? I may want to consider different boards since the IBMs are getting harder to find.

They are cross-flashed pretty much the same as IBM M1015s. Have the same chipset (SAS2008); so I do pretty much the same steps. Only thing different is that you may have first apply Dell's Firmware (at least v7); then apply LSI's P7, then you can go all the way up to P20. All of this is done in one session (no reboots in between). There is a thread somewhere that I even posted the files and instructions to make things easy...

@Spearfoot just recently was trying to tempt my hardware addiction by telling me of a sweet deal on eBay where he just bought two for $40.00 each via "Best Offer".

As far as usage:

• Connected to 12 x 2TB HGST on one system (Customer's)
• Connected to 12 x 3TB HGST on one system (Same Customer)
• Connected to 12 x 3TB HGST on one system (Different Customer)
• Perc H200 Mezzanine Model connected to one of my FreeNAS machines
  • Currently has 6 SAS and two Intel DC S3710 (200GB)
  • More drives to come as I migrate stuff
• Connected to 12 x 2TB HGST on another of my systems
  • Will be changed as I do my migration
  • Think this one also has a Mezzanine Model in there too..
• I did have one running in IR Mode for an ESXi box, but have since changed that

Seeing the pattern that I like the Perc H200 and HGST Drives yet? ;)

In the end they show up as a "SAS9211-8i" (this is from one of my "Mezzanine" models):

Code:

sas2flash -c 0 -list
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2013.03.01)
Copyright (c) 2008-2013 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved

  Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B1)

  Controller Number  : 0
  Controller  : SAS2008(B1)
  PCI Address  : 00:03:00:00
  SAS Address  : [Redacted]
  NVDATA Version (Default)  : 14.01.00.08
  NVDATA Version (Persistent)  : 14.01.00.08
  Firmware Product ID  : 0x2213 (IT)
  Firmware Version  : 20.00.04.00
  NVDATA Vendor  : LSI
  NVDATA Product ID  : SAS9211-8i
  BIOS Version  : 07.39.00.00
  UEFI BSD Version  : N/A
  FCODE Version  : N/A
  Board Name  : SAS2 Mezz
  Board Assembly  : N/A
  Board Tracer Number  : N/A

  Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
  Exiting SAS2Flash.

 

[Brian Blater]

They are cross-flashed pretty much the same as IBM M1015s. Have the same chipset (SAS2008); so I do pretty much the same steps. Only thing different is that you may have first apply Dell's Firmware (at least v7); then apply LSI's P7, then you can go all the way up to P20. All of this is done in one session (no reboots in between). There is a thread somewhere that I even posted the files and instructions to make things easy...

@Spearfoot just recently was trying to tempt my hardware addiction by telling me of a sweet deal on eBay where he just bought two for $40.00 each via "Best Offer".

As far as usage:

• Connected to 12 x 2TB HGST on one system (Customer's)
• Connected to 12 x 3TB HGST on one system (Same Customer)
• Connected to 12 x 3TB HGST on one system (Different Customer)
• Perc H200 Mezzanine Model connected to one of my FreeNAS machines
  • Currently has 6 SAS and two Intel DC S3710 (200GB)
  • More drives to come as I migrate stuff
• Connected to 12 x 2TB HGST on another of my systems
  • Will be changed as I do my migration
  • Think this one also has a Mezzanine Model in there too..
• I did have one running in IR Mode for an ESXi box, but have since changed that

Seeing the pattern that I like the Perc H200 and HGST Drives yet? ;)

In the end they show up as a "SAS9211-8i" (this is from one of my "Mezzanine" models):

Which model of HGST drives did you go with? Does the SAS9211-8i support 4TB drives or larger?

 

[Mirfster]

Which model of HGST drives did you go with?

All of mine are 7200 RPM Enterprise drives. They run a little hotter and consume a little more power, but I still am partial to them myself.
2TB Drives = HUA723020ALA641 (SATA)
3TB Drives = HUA723030ALA640 (SATA)
4TB Drives = HUS724040ALS640 (SAS)

Does the SAS9211-8i support 4TB drives or larger?

Yes, so do the Perc H200 and IBM M1015 (as well as Perc H310)

 

[Brian Blater]

All of mine are 7200 RPM Enterprise drives. They run a little hotter and consume a little more power, but I still am partial to them myself.
2TB Drives = HUA723020ALA641 (SATA)
3TB Drives = HUA723030ALA640 (SATA)
4TB Drives = HUS724040ALS640 (SAS)

Yes, so do the Perc H200 and IBM M1015 (as well as Perc H310)

Thank you for the information. Found some HDDs on eBay that just might work. Also, the Perc H310 is pretty cheap on eBay.

 

[Spearfoot]

I own an IBM M1015 and several Dell H200's. The IBM board's manufacturing quality and fit'n'finish exceeds that of the Dells, but I've found them to be functionally equivalent when flashed to the same firmware level.

I'm just skeptical that swapping the M1015s for H310s or H200s is going to solve this problem.

 

[Brian Blater]

I own an IBM M1015 and several Dell H200's. The IBM board's manufacturing quality and fit'n'finish exceeds that of the Dells, but I've found them to be functionally equivalent when flashed to the same firmware level.

I'm just skeptical that swapping the M1015s for H310s or H200s is going to solve this problem.

I'm not thinking to swap the M1015 for the Dell's as I know the problem is the firmware on the drives (at least I'm pretty sure) and since they were OEM drives, I cannot get any firmware upgrades.

My thought on the Dell's was so I have a backup option for HBAs if the IBMs become scarce.

 

[Spearfoot]

I'm not thinking to swap the M1015 for the Dell's as I know the problem is the firmware on the drives (at least I'm pretty sure) and since they were OEM drives, I cannot get any firmware upgrades.

My thought on the Dell's was so I have a backup option for HBAs if the IBMs become scarce.

Oh, I see! And I agree... I own four of the Dell H200's exactly for that reason. They're cheap, and they 'Just Work'.