SAS Drive expansion card not working in TrueNAS Scale

[maci]

Dear TN community, I have posted once before and got tremendous help, so here I am again with yet another question. I recently bought a SAS expansion card as every forum advised against SATA expansion cards. I purchased a LSI 9211-8i SAS HBA - Dell H310 with IT Mode (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325677573475). However, once I pop it in, my PC running TrueNAS no longer boots, it gets stuck in a power-on-power-off loop. No drives are plugged into the card yet. Here are my PC specs:

Intel I5 3570K
Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
16GB RAM @ 1333Mhz

Is there a step I'm missing? Something I have overlooked? Thank you in advance.

 

[maci]

Dear TN community, I have posted once before and got tremendous help, so here I am again with yet another question. I recently bought a SAS expansion card as every forum advised against SATA expansion cards. I purchased a LSI 9211-8i SAS HBA - Dell H310 with IT Mode (https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325677573475). However, once I pop it in, my PC running TrueNAS no longer boots, it gets stuck in a power-on-power-off loop. No drives are plugged into the card yet. Here are my PC specs:

Intel I5 3570K
Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
16GB RAM @ 1333Mhz

Is there a step I'm missing? Something I have overlooked? Thank you in advance.

I contacted the seller and this seems to be a common issue, thanks to his fast reply I was able to solve thi quite quickly. I'll post the solution too in case anyone else runs into the same problem, or the mods can delete this pot alltogether if it clutters the forum.

How to fix SMBus issue on Dell HBA RAID SAS controllers by taping B5 B6 pins

Using Dell HBA or RAID SAS controllers in non-Dell machines can some times have a conflict with the SMBus; causing the system not to boot or other strange sy...

www.youtube.com

 

[HoneyBadger]

You circled back and posted valuable information that can help another user if they happen upon it through search terms; most definitely not clutter at all. Thanks for posting the resolution!

 

[maci]

SATA Drives connected to SAS Card not showing up in BIOS or TrueNAS

Adding onto this thread, by covering the pins the system boots okay, now I have been finally able to connect the drives to the card, specific model mentioned above, however, the drives connected to the card do not show up, neither in the BIOS or TrueNAS. Any ideas?

They're 4x 8TB SATA drives connected via SAS-Sata Forward breakout cable. I've researched a bit on the forum and the internet but there's a wide variety of nuances to every post I've seen; from removing the boot/bios-rom from the HBA card to other solutions. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

 

[ChrisRJ]

Isn't the title misleading? I came here to read about issues with a SAS expander, but it seems to be about an HBA.

 

[maci]

Isn't the title misleading? I came here to read about issues with a SAS expander, but it seems to be about an HBA.

Apologies, perhaps I haven't used the right terminology. I'm not that experienced so thought it meant the same thing.

 

[Jailer]

Are these by chance white label hard drives? It may be an issue with the 3.3v line if they are. There are a few different work arounds to solve the issue if it is in fact the problem.

 

[PhilD13]

Western digital has a good write up on the 3.3v issue that affects both SAS and SATA.
Power Disable Feature

 

[ChrisRJ]

Apologies, perhaps I haven't used the right terminology. I'm not that experienced so thought it meant the same thing.

No problem. It would probably help if you changed the title. With that you would attract the right people who might be able to help