USB booting stops when adding drives

[digity]

I added two SSD drives to my server (details below) and created a new volume and everything was running okay for maybe 24 hours until the server oddly crashed/hung. Upon rebooting the server I got a no bootable media/drive found error (despite the fact BIOS recognizes the bootable USB flash drive). Long story short, after some troubleshooting I discovered my server won't boot from any USB flash drive after adding those drives (this includes any OS installation or installer on USB, not just FreeNAS). I tried different drive bays, same result. If I remove the newly added drives, the server boots from a USB flash drive successfully again.

I understand this likely a mobo, controller, expander, backplane and/or drive issue, but given there's so many possibilities I figured I asked here since others may have experienced this issue with one or a combo of the parts below. If not, any clue as to why the server would cease booting from USB after drives are added (and boot again when they're removed)?

2 x 60GB Intel SSD 520 series SSDs (added drives/drives in question)
10 x 2TB SATA II & III, 5400 & 7200 RPM mix of HDD drive (main pool/volume)
Norco RPC-4224 24 bay 3.5"/2.5" HDD/SSD drive bay 4U rackmount server case
Intel RES2SV240NC SAS Expander
LSI 9211-8i controller (in IT mode)
Supermicro X8DTL-i dual LGA1366 mobo
Seasonic FOCUS Plus Series SSR-750FX 750W 80+ Gold PSU
FreeNAS 11.1

 

[digity]

I played around with this some more... when I add just 1 drive (SSD or HDD) it boots USB just fine. When I add 2 or more drives (SSDs and/or HDDs) it stops booting from USB. I tried different bays, in different rows and columns with the added drives and the server still won't boot USB. I removed the added drives and relocated the current/main drives to different bays, in different rows and columns and the server boots from USB just fine.

So I can't add more than 11 drives in my 24 bay server at the moment because it cease to boot from USB if I add more. Any ideas?

 

[digity]

Solved! I went into the LSI 9211-8i config utility and set the adapter's Boot Support option to OS only (originally set to BIOS & OS). During reboot the adapter's ROM/BIOS now says user disabled something instead of listing all the attached drives, but the server now successfully boots from USB with 12 or more drives. I'm guessing the mobo's BIOS gets confused because the list of attached drives gets cut off on screen. I don't know, anyway it's working now and I haven't experienced any issues even though the drives don't list in the adapter's ROM/BIOS anymore.

Hope that helps someone.

 

[digity]

Nevermind, it's not solved. In less than 2 days, FreeNAS crashed/hung again (just like before) even after initially successfully booting from USB with 12 or more drives installed and the card's Boot Support set to OS only. Upon rebooting, the server now, once again, won't boot from USB. Back to the drawing board. Any ideas?