SOLVED LSI 9211-8i (Dell H310) and Supermicro X10SLL motherboard RAID option

[wblock]

Six new drives were attached to a Dell H310 which has been flashed to IT firmware (only, no boot BIOS). One of the drives was never detected. Replacing power and signal cables did nothing. Swapped power and signal cables with a working drive, and that drive continued to work while the non-working one stayed not working. A replacement drive was still not detected, not seen in mpsutil show all, and did not spin up.

What finally solved it was disabling the SATA Frozen and SATA RAID Option ROM/UEFI Driver BIOS options on the X10SLL motherboard. It was likely the second that was the problem. My brain hurts just trying to imagine the interaction here, so just recording this for when I've forgotten it down the road.

 

[Chris Moore]

What kind of drives were these that might make a difference?

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[wblock]

8TB WD Red. But I bet I could have put any type of SATA drive there and the motherboard would happily protect me from being able to use it.

Oh, and the drives connected directly to the motherboard never had a problem either way.

 

[Chris Moore]

There have been some people with problems using a 10 TB Seagate Drive recently. Do you think this might be related?

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[wblock]

I don't think so. It was a very binary situation: drive did not work, at all, ever, even a little bit, until the BIOS option was changed. After that, it has not had a problem. It's early yet, but this drive is the same as the other five, and none of them have had a problem.

 

[Ericloewe]

SATA Frozen

That sounds like "freeze SATA devices configuration until further notice", which seems like a very useless function to have. Not sure what else it might mean. Anyway, I don't remember it being on my X10SLM+-F, but it's been a while since I've had to look at that BIOS.

 

[Ericloewe]

Wait, the BIOS option on the motherboard was interfering with the drive while connected to the LSI controller?

 

[wblock]

Evidently. No, it does not make sense.

"Freeze SATA" is, according to a search, supposed to be for drives with a password set. But that makes no sense either, especially as it happened to two drives, neither of which had a password set.

 

[Ericloewe]

Evidently. No, it does not make sense.

At first I thought "gee, this UEFI thing is a bit too smart for its own good, messing with options on the PCI option ROMs", then I realized you'd said it didn't have the option ROM installed.

My brain hurts just trying to imagine the interaction here

I think I'll leave it at that. Everything I come up with is horrible.

 

[wblock]

Having had another round of fighting with this, I think I have finally figured out the problem. It was not the 9211 (Dell H310). It was not the drives. It was not the motherboard.

It was, in fact, that EVGA modular power cables with SATA connectors can have some connectors that simply do not work. It is not a positional thing, a connector in the middle of the cable can be bad while downstream ones work fine. My error was assuming that would not be possible, but these are crimped pins, so maybe it's just a faulty crimp. Well, at least two faulty crimps, on different cables. And I think at one point I must have just switched the two bad connectors, hiding the problem. It was a real relief to find something that finally solved the problem.

This is an EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 220-G2-0550-Y1 80+ Gold power supply, highly reviewed when I bought it in October of 2016. I don't think I'll be getting any more of these, and this one might be looking at a replacement in the near future.