IronWolf 8TB not found by M1015 / SAS9211-8i

[taenzerme]

Hello all,

I recently got a M1015 pre-flashed to 20.00.04.00 in IT-Mode. My plan was to use this one with 6 x 8TB Seagate IronWolf ST8000VN0022 drives I already got some weeks ago. No luck so far - the drives are not beeing found either in the M1015 BIOS nor by FreeNAS.

Just to check I replaced one drive with a WD 2 TB WD2005FBYZ-01YCBB1 Gold drive. This one is found instantly and shows up in the M1015 BIOS, too.

I read about some Pin 3 Power connector problems somewhere but don't remember where. Could this be some sort of incompability with these new IronWolf drives not powering up connected to the M1015?

JFYI: Connecting these drives to the on board SATA controller (Intel S5520HC board with passive backplane) they show up fine (but 3Gbps only...)

Would be happy if someone has another idea what to try.

Thanks,
Sebastian

 

[m0nkey_]

I believe the drive size limit for the M1015 is 4TB drives. Anything over this will not be detected.

 

[taenzerme]

Thanks for your response. This reddit thread states something different:

That said, the M1015 handles 8TB drives without a problem.

I read on the M1015 before ordering a lot and never read anything about a size limit with current firmwares...

 

[m0nkey_]

I have the same M1015, you're lucky to have anything over >2.2TB work but typically they will work with 4TB (maybe sometimes 6TB). The fact you've already said they work when directly attached to the motherboard would suggest you're hitting the M1015 physical drive size limitation.

 

[taenzerme]

I suspect something like this, yeah. Yet still, isn't the M1015 the same as the LSI SAS 9211-8i chipset? Broadcom's compability docs list a lot of 6 & 8TB drives in the list here.

 

[Johnnie Black]

M1015 has no issues with 8TB disks, maybe some incompatibility, you should also upgrade to latest firmware, 20.00.07

 

[taenzerme]

Johnnie, thanks for the feedback.

After updating the controller to 20.00.07 it still did not show the 8TB SG drives, only the 2TB WD.

I put the M1015 into another server with an Intel S5520HC board with an 8-Bay backplane and voila, the 8TB drives show up.

The original server is actually an S5520UR with a passive mid plane (Intel FURPASMP).

Could the mid plane be interfering?

 

[scrappy]

I am running 8TB WD Red drives off my M1015 without issue. Sounds to me that your backplane cannot see drives over a certain size.

 

[Jailer]

Could the mid plane be interfering?

Sounds like your post already answered that question.

 

[taenzerme]

@Jailer, sure, I know. Yet still I'd like to understand what's going on and what a so called "passive midplane" does to in regards to passing the disks to the HBA. I always thought this basically just is power and data passthrough without any modifications.

OT: Do these newer drives (8TB+) need more power to start or sth. like this?

 

[Chris Moore]

the drives are not beeing found either in the M1015 BIOS nor by FreeNAS.

What firmware (exactly) do you have installed on these controllers?
Sorry, I didn't read far enough before asking, I see it is already answered.
The "passive" midplane may not be as passive as advertised. How many drive slots are on the midplane? It may have an expander chip in it that you don't know about.

 

[Ericloewe]

I believe the drive size limit for the M1015 is 4TB drives. Anything over this will not be detected.

What are you talking about? I've never heard of any limitations on LSI SAS2 controllers, and they wouldn't make sense. LSI SAS1 controllers are limited to 2.something TB because they truncate LBAs to 32 bits instead of 48 bits. There's no reason to truncate it to 33 bits, at that point, you'd just go to 64 bits and never have this problem again and it would still be cheaper than the weird 33 or 34 bits.