Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 Hey guys! I'm in the process of upgrading and moving my 20 drive array into a 24 drive SuperMicro 4u enclosure I picked up off ebay. It has an an Adaptec 5805 controller and a BPN-SAS-846EL1 backplane. My previous 20 drive enclosure was driven by 2 x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 controllers with the Norco SAS backplane. All my drives show up on the Adaptec controller initialization screen, but then it says "no logical drives found". Once UNRAID boots up, it's unable to see any of my drives. Looking at the Adaptec documentation it says I have to "initialize" the drives in the Adaptec BIOS, even for JBOD. I have not done this, as I fear it will erase the drives. It's 65 TB of data and reformatting the drives is not an option. Will initializing the drives really erase them like i suspect? Did I just blow it by getting an enclosure with this adaptec controller? Thanks! Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 According to this link http://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/support/raid/sas_raid/sas-5805/ that card does not support JBOD. I would pull that card, and put one of your AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards in its place and connect the back plane to that, it should boot and find your drives. Did you make a not of your drives before you moved them? Do you know which drive is your parity drive? Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 Thank you for the reply! In the Adaptec card's BIOS it does "allow" me to specify each drive as JBOD, but I have to initialize them first. That's the part that scares me. I did just try putting one of my AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards in, and that kind of works? It times out when spinning up drives, but if I proceed anyway UNRAID sees them, but a few drives are missing. Something isn't quite right... Yes, I did take note of my drives before doing this, thank you! Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 I suppose the question is what SAS card will work best with the BPN-SAS-846EL1 backplane and allow me to use drives formerly used on the AOC-SASLP-MV8 controller. I'm also seeing some whispers of this particular backplane not supporting drives over 2TB, but nothing definite. Is anyone able to shed some light on that? Thanks again! Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 Thank you for the reply! In the Adaptec card's BIOS it does "allow" me to specify each drive as JBOD, but I have to initialize them first. That's the part that scares me. It'd scare me too -- initialization will almost certainly write SOMETHING to the disk. I'd take a couple spare disks; create a "test" UnRAID on your current system (or a spare system if you have one); write a few files to it and confirm you can read/write okay to the array; and then move those disks to your new enclosure and go ahead with the initialization -- you'll then know if this causes any problem with the disks ... and may keep you from doing something catastrophic on your current system. Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 I'm in the process of moving all my drives back to the old enclosure while I figure this out (Plex server downtime isn't fun). That's a good idea, I think I will try that. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 The SASLP should work with that backplane but performance won't be very good, I would get a LSI based controller, like the IBM M1015 or Dell H310 and crossflash it to IT mode. Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 Okay, so I just made a quick new array with 2 drives (no parity) directly connected to the motherboard's SATA ports and copied a few files over. I then powered down and moved the drives over to the Adaptec controller / backplane, initialized them in the controller's BIOS (as JBOD), then booted into UNRAID. Interestingly the drives showed up in UNRAID (with the same identification serial numbers), but UNRAID reported the drives as being wrong. I figured this means the controller was in fact destructively wiping the drives. Out of curiosity I tried moving them back to the mobo SATA connectors, and the array came back online with the files intact! Very perplexing... The Adaptec controller initialization is NOT destructive, but it's doing something to cause UNRAID to not recognize the drives. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 If the identification is exactly the same but they are reported as wrong by unRAID then their size reported by the controller is different. Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 I just repeated the procedure but proceeded to wipe the config and start a new array, and assign the 2 drives to see if it picked it up. That did not work, and UNRAID said the drives were unmountable. I had to format them to bring the now empty array online through the Adaptec controller / backplane. Side note: I now notice the drive temps and SMART data is not accessible through the adaptec controller / backplane as well... Ugh, this is turning into a nightmare! Thanks again for your input, guys. The SASLP should work with that backplane but performance won't be very good, I would get a LSI based controller, like the IBM M1015 or Dell H310 and crossflash it to IT mode. I tried it but it doesn't really work. The controller times out while waiting for the drives to spin up, and if I proceed anyway UNRAID throws a bunch of errors and a few drives are missing. The missing drives appear to be random each reboot, as well. I only tried it a few times though so I don't know for certain what might be going on here. Do you know if an LSI based controller will be able to read SMART data / drive temps through the backplane? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 29, 2017 Share Posted January 29, 2017 The LSI should work fine, as is the same chipset brand used by the backplane/expander Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 The LSI should work fine, as is the same chipset brand used by the backplane/expander Would this work? - http://www.ebay.com/itm/UNRAID-IT-Mode-LSI-9210-8i-SAS-SATA-8-port-PCI-E-6Gb-s-Controller-Card-FREENAS-/142233544984?hash=item211dc7a918:g:zEwAAOSw44BYbDdQ Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 Okay, ordered. Hopefully this works! Thank you Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted February 2, 2017 Author Share Posted February 2, 2017 So that card arrived today and I installed it, but still having some problems. It took FOREVER to initialize (longer than 10 minutes), and when it finally did, none of my drives were visible to UNRAID. I tried removing them all and just putting 2 spare drives (2TB and 5TB) and that seemed to work just fine, so I don't think there's a size limitation on the controller card or the backplane with the >2TB drive, but for some reason when I plug them all in (20 drives, currently) it completely fails. Any ideas? Do you think it's the backplane that might be causing the problems? Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 How many ports are there on your backplane? My supermicro enclosure has the same backplane as you and it has three ports, J0-J2, I am using port J0 to connect the backplane to my HBA. Which one are you using? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 It may be the backplane, apparently doesn't like when there's a lot of >2TB disks, newer BPN-SAS2-846EL1 works fine. I own one of these units myself, and depending on which model you have (I had a R900B) that backplane is not suited for 4TB disks. I know, that sounds stupid, but I had a problem with it myself, it works fine for 24x2TB drives, but when I plugged 3TB drives into it, only half the drives were available. I started looking at ebay listings and one vendor had a disclaimer specifically about this on his sale, so I contacted him to ask because I couldn't find any corroborating evidence through google. He was very informative and said that the reason he puts that disclaimer on his sales is because he worked a large order for these exact servers and had like a 90% backplane failure rate with drives >2TB. He told me that backplane model "BPN-SAS2-846EL1" which comes with the R1200B model works fine with >2TB drives, so I bought one off him (drop in replacement) and it worked fine. I asked him if he thought backplane firmware could be the issue, and he told me that he had updated the backplane firmwares (along with everything else) during his testing phase and he said it did not appear to fix anything. Who knows though, you might get lucky. https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/3cjd4z/perplexed_about_my_backplane/ Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted February 2, 2017 Author Share Posted February 2, 2017 How many ports are there on your backplane? My supermicro enclosure has the same backplane as you and it has three ports, J0-J2, I am using port J0 to connect the backplane to my HBA. Which one are you using? It has 3 ports. I've been plugging J1 and J2 into my controller, as that's how it was with the Adaptec 5805 controller. I was under the impression that J0 was for hooking to another (possibly external) backplane? Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted February 2, 2017 Author Share Posted February 2, 2017 newer BPN-SAS2-846EL1 works fine. Yeah, they're also $700 on ebay... Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 Well I don't think you have anything to lose by trying Port 0 at this point. Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted February 2, 2017 Author Share Posted February 2, 2017 Well I don't think you have anything to lose by trying Port 0 at this point. Trying that now, thank you. Do you have drives bigger than 2TB on your backplane? What controller are you using with it exactly? Thanks again for your feedback! Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 Its all in my signature. I have 5x8TB drives and several 5, 4 and 3 TB drives. I am using a Dell Perc H310 as my HBA. Quote Link to comment
Treytor Posted February 3, 2017 Author Share Posted February 3, 2017 Interesting... Waiting for it to boot up now. Still taking a LONG time to boot up and initialize. Would there be any reason your Dell Perc H310 would work and my LSI 9210-8i wouldn't? Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 Well two things come to mind. What slot do you have your HBA in? One of the very knowledgeable and friendly people helping me out on here when I was having issues, pointed out that the 16X slot I had my card in initially was really only running at 4x, so I put it in an 8x slot and it was fine. The other thing is the BIOS of your card, have you gone into it and gone through the settings to make sure nothing is turned on or turned off that shouldn't be? Quote Link to comment
garycase Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 newer BPN-SAS2-846EL1 works fine. Yeah, they're also $700 on ebay... Actually they're about half of that -- here's a listing for $400 "or best offer" ... the last couple of sales have been at $350 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-BPN-SAS2-846EL1-24-Port-4U-SAS-SATA-Expander-Backplane-SAS2-846EL1-/351971545061?hash=item51f3238fe5:g:b90AAOSwjDZYkgSs Quote Link to comment
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