Flashing SAS Card to HBA IT Mode -- FreeDOS Possible?

[BobCochran]

I need to flash my IBM M1015 card into IT mode, so that I can add more hard drives to my system. Would it work if I create a bootable FreeDOS USB drive, or do I have to use the Microsoft versions of DOS?

The person who posted this:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.msg124393#msg124393

just says this:

First off, create a standard bootable DOS USB Flash Drive.

...with no advice about how to do that.

FreeDOS should be okay? I will try.

Thanks

Bob

 

[raidflex]

I used freeDOS on a usb drive and was able to flash the controller into IT mode without an issue. Just make sure you only boot into freeDOS live CD/USB mode only, don't use HIMEM.

 

[BobCochran]

I used freeDOS on a usb drive and was able to flash the controller into IT mode without an issue. Just make sure you only boot into freeDOS live CD/USB mode only, don't use HIMEM.

Thank you, I will try that.
Bob

 

[survive]

Hi Bob,

I use the files here:

http://www.bay-wolf.com/usbmemstick.htm

to make a "real" DOS USB key.

-Will

 

[BobCochran]

Thank you very much, Will! By the way do you have any photos of your enclosure and hard drives?

Bob

 

[BobCochran]

As a followup to this, I used a FreeDOS 1.0 boot image and syslinux 4.05 and fdisk to get FreeDOS onto a USB key and make it bootable. Then I started researching the LSI website to get their latest IT mode firmware and BIOS for the M1015/LSI9220-8i card that I bought off Ebay. Between the research and the flash drive preparation, this consumed about 14 hours of my time yesterday.

I was able to update the controller card into IT Mode with complete success. BIOS is dated 02/16/2012 and the firmware is...I think...dated 03/06/2012. Then I connected 4 hard drives to Port 0 on the card, held my breath, and booted FreeNAS 8.04. It seems to see my volumes just fine. I didn't even have to configure anything on the LSI card by going into the LSI configuration menu. I thought I would have to set the card to treat the hard drives as JBODs, but I guess flashing it into IT mode removed any RAID features and it sees hard drives in JBOD mode by default.

Hopefully, I will be able to avoid drive spindown problems. I'm not sure I really understand that issue.

I want to express my thanks for the help I have received. Next step: Test transferring more data to the storage volumes, and add a bunch of new hard drives to it.

Bob

 

[BobCochran]

I'm transferring another terabyte of data to the 3.6 Tb array now, and the LSI card is doing wonderful things for my transfer speed. I'm getting 56 or so Mbps.

Bob