Help please with driver & firmware versions

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Szyrs

Dabbler
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Jan 23, 2015
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Hi, after installing free as for the first time a few months ago I'm still fairly low on the learning curve. I've come from a 90% windows background so it's been a fairly uphill struggle so far.

I thought I'd try first with a bunch of old 3tb drives I had laying about so I've created a 20tb pool on them, using an ibm m1015b flashed to it mode. In all honesty the entire hardware setup cost me more than I'd expected and I did go over budget for the build. As was expected, some of the hdds were pretty quick to throw up errors, so keeping it alive has kept me on my toes.

I noticed with a few hdds that I was not getting the same errors in testing once I'd replaced them in my box. Once removed, some would pass extended tests without errors, write 0's to whole drives etc. I've looked this up through google and found a post from cyberjock (actually a reply to a post) that said to check the firmware version to the driver version as mismatches can cause issues. I've done this and found that my firmware version is 16 while the driver version is 21, so there is a mismatch.

This confuses me a little because I initially had 2 of these m1015b's but after flashing the first one following all the steps including the sas address, I've never been able to access the card again. So I purchased a 2nd one (after some hesitation) and found a lot of posts in various forums slamming users for using incorrect or unapproved firmware versions (newer than were recommended) so I went with what was said to the the one, p16, according to cyberjock. Obviously I've got myself muddled somehow at this point, probably by going off old information.

So now I'm in a situation where I need to correct the driver/firmware mismatch that I have and also prevent this problem coming up again. I'm fairly hesitant to pull out my m1015b and flash it again but it looks like that is the only real solution, can someone confirm this please? Also, am I expected to continue reflashing the firmware every time the drivers are updated, or how does it work? If there is a way to revert to driver version 16 can someone tell me why I would not be doing that instead? I'm a bit worried that if I brick my controller I'll be left with data I can't access and a nas I can't use until I buy more hardware - money I'd much rather be putting towards new hard drives...

I'm running 11.0u4, I'm not connected to the internet and I don't exceed 7 concurrent users, if any of that matters.

Thanks very much for your time, I'd value any insight or advise regarding this issue. Cheers
 

gpsguy

Active Member
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Jan 22, 2012
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Disregard the message from cyberjock - it's old. p16 was used with older versions of FreeNAS.

With 11.0u4, you'll want to flash the firmware with 20.00.07 in IT mode.

Yes, there will be a mismatch, but there isn't a v21. The version above is correct.
 

Szyrs

Dabbler
Joined
Jan 23, 2015
Messages
15
Disregard the message from cyberjock - it's old. p16 was used with older versions of FreeNAS.

With 11.0u4, you'll want to flash the firmware with 20.00.07 in IT mode.

Yes, there will be a mismatch, but there isn't a v21. The version above is correct.

Thanks very much. So where do I subscribe to in order to stay up to snuff on the latest?
 
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