BUILD Hardware Issue or Compatibility Issue?

[DoubleIPA]

Hi

I'm having an issue with the BIOS recognizing my drives. I have 6 x 4TB Seagate NAS drives and none are detected when plugging into the backplane of the Norco RPC-3216. The backplane is Fuhe BP-001c and supports sas and sata drives. However I'v head no luck with the SAS controller or SATA controller when using the backplane. However, when I use a strait SATA cable, the board sees the drives. There is power to the drive, or at least I see a light. I've tied other drive sizes with no success. My question is, which is the most likely candidate for the problem, the main board, backplane or cables? Are they not compatible? I've tried several of the HighPoint cables any no luck.

Board: Supermicro X10SL7-F
Chasis: Norco RPC-3216
Cables: HightPoint Internal mini-SAS to 4SATA (SFF8087 to SATA) INT-MS-1M4S

Thanks for any help.

Peter

 

[cuban8]

Hi Peter,
I had the same problem. There are two kinds of SFF8087 to SATA cables:
- to connect 4 SATA disks to a controller with SFF8087 (aka "normal") - this is probably what you have
- to connect a SAS backplane with a SFF8087 to 4 SATA ports on the controller (aka "reverse") - this is probably what you need
These cables look exactly the same, but are not interchangeable.
Regards,
cuban8

 

[DoubleIPA]

Thanks Cuban8

I looked and didn't see that it specified reverse, so I think you hit the nail on the head. However I'm contemplating returning the chassis anyway at this point because the of the cost and the fact that it was stated as new, but was clearly used and had some physical damage on the inside. I can buy regular server chassis for around $99 and will just have to pull the unit out of the rack if/when a drive fails. What do you think? It's just for home use and since FreeNAS doesn't support hot swap it seems like a waste of money.

 

[cyberjock]

Hotswap works if your hardware supports it, it is enabled, and the FreeBSD driver supports it.

 

[DoubleIPA]

Oh... I've read several places that said it didn't. Thank you Cyberjock. I saw your post on Ars the other day.

I'll try other cables.

Peter

 

[cyberjock]

My post on Ars? I'm not on Ars. What do you mean? Someone on Ars linked to my presentation?

 

[DoubleIPA]

Yes.. .someone linked to your post on here in the comments. I thought it might be you, but I thought wrong. Ars is going to do a write-up on FreeNAS fairly soon.

File Systems: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/bitrot-and-atomic-cows-inside-next-gen-filesystems/
ZFS: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/ars-walkthrough-using-the-zfs-next-gen-filesystem-on-linux/

Both are interesting reads, but I'm looking forward to the FreeNAS write-up.

 

[levshuki]

hi
iam olso use Board: Supermicro X10SL7-F
with 7 disk seagate nas 4TB
i get error wen i copy files CAM status: SCSI Status Error

i just want to be sure that the board work without any Special setting
wich disk are you use ?
Thanks ',

 

[DoubleIPA]

I have 4TB seagate nas drives, but they're not currently running on any of the sas SATA ports. I'm running a 6 drive raid on the other ports until I find out from NORCO wether they'll replace the faulty backplanes or not.

 

[levshuki]

so if i want to use the sas port 8x SAS2 (6Gbps) via LSI 2308
for my freenas Is it possible?

 

[DoubleIPA]

Well you didn't specify if you wanted to use them with SATA drives or SAS, but I'm going to assume SATA and yes, it is possible. Just hook them up to the ports. I've read that older boards - for better performance - you may need to flash into IT mode, but I'm not sure about this board.