I really don't want to sound stupid but what exactly do you mean with "your buying options will probably be limited" and "it really does have external connectors???"?
And I did some googling and yeah, most people also write about hardware of firmware being the issue. So from what I can understand my only real options are either buying a different HBA or trying to upgrade to the newest firmware?
I did try to follow this guide to update my firmware but there still is an issue I haven't found an answer to...
I'm very very sure that I got the correct firmware packages and stuff and did the "chmod +x sas2flash" command to make it executable, however, when I try the "./sas2flash -listall" command I get this error message:
LSI Corporation SAS2 Flash Utility
Version 20.00.00.00 (2014.09.18)
Copyright (c) 2008-2014 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved
No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available!
ERROR: Command Not allowed without an adapter!
ERROR: Couldn't Create Command -listall
Exiting Program.
For other people with this issue the solution was that the firmware flashing utility was wrong/the wrong version, but that can't be the case for me? Mine is mpt2sas, even the error message you showed me says that so it has to be right, no?
There are 2 other things I found weird...
When I use the "lspci -s 08:00.0 -vv | more" command, 08:00.0 being my HBA, and scroll to the very bottom it says "Kernel modules: mpt3sas". On a video from The Art of Server he used the same command but got a different output at the bottom. "Kernel driver in use: mpt2sas Kernel modules: mpt2sas". Obviously I won't get the Kernal driver message since it didn't load my card, but why am I getting a mpt2sas message?
When I use the "lspci -v" command, it tells me my card is a LSI SAS 9201-16i, but as far as I know the i stands for internal, and I can clearly see that my 8088 ports are external, so I must actually have a LSI SAS 9201-16e card, no? Could this be some kind of issue or is this pretty irrelevant?
Thank you for giving me a lead to look for a solution. Do you maybe have any idea why I can't flash the firmware? Would flashing it even help and what other options are there for me to make it work again? Thank you and hope you have a nice day!