madburg

Sorry guys, have been offline for sometime. Johnm, from your screenshot above you are on an old version of preclear, highly recommend you get the latest when dealing with 3tb drives. Now someone made a comment P11 has been out 8 weeks. First off, the date LSI stamps is not the same as when they actually make it available. I heavily tested P10 on MANY controllers, I have not had a chance to read up on P11 to know if there are any benefit to us on unRAID or bug fixes that count, again because we are in IT mode. As soon as I get a moment I will look at P11 (thanks for the heads up, as I bitched to LSI why there is no mailing list I could join to get such announcements). #2, I see Tom cut out beta 13, does who rushed in paid a price, sure beta testers are always needed, but just shows newer is not always better. I have not had issues with chipsets, but I always do this off two machines a SM board or a Dell pro workstation. Both are Intel, and the community has posted what boards it fails with (pal errors) so I would go by that, cant help there. I flash an enormous amount of cards for friends, etc. if you have the right board it's 1,2,3 and your done (not the steps, seconds ). I preclear many drives (3tb included) P10 is solid. Someone posted after a failed bios clear, they cant even get the card parsed via 1.bat, that card is gone... Most of you are picking up used cards from unknown sources (I don't mean the seller, but we're the card came from and how it was handled, defects from the factory, etc). So a small number will be flat out damage cards, keep that in mind. PAL errors are not a sign of a damaged card. I personally am running my cards currently on P10 virtualized unRaid beta 12a at this time. Food for thought, when Tom posts a new beta, I now wait for speeding_ant to bless SF is good or needs updating and Z publishes the latest VMTools Not to happy these days with how the stability is unfolding, but we'll see what happens. I cross my fingers as this is an excellent concept for lower tier storage. And has the most amazing, cool and talented forum members. But I'm not selling my enterprise HP server/arrays anytime soon.

Did you mean 1.12beta and 1.13 will correctly preclear a 3TB drive? That seems to be the case, 1.12beta shows up as 1.11 in the emailed status reports for all the ones I did.

The empty.bin file is in the zip, not sure what you may have done, but you may want to start all over from scratch.

Thanks. I checked it out and was going to flash it. But I though about it being silly to flash a very good hardware raid controller to let it be a normal sata controller. Though the 8 ports are handy for use in unraid. But then I checked out what the card would sell for. And it appears that I can sell the card here for more then the price of a new MV8 with SATA2 support. So I can better do that I guess. But if that doesn't turn out this is definitely a possible solution. Yeap! I meantioned it before, unless you got a card for very little to free, some of them are worth selling and picking up cheaper cards. Good luck, let us know how you make out!

That's what I though. I just wanted to be sure. I've searched but indeed couldn't find anyone who already tried. I really want to try but the only thing holding me back is the chance that if I flash it I cannot reverse it. Only thing that is on Dell' site is the fact on how to flash the BIOS. Indeed the Perc 6/i is based on LSI 1068. In fact it seems to be the same as the LSI MegaRAID SAS 8888ELP controller. I've flashed the card 4 times before with updated firmwares which all went well. Two of the times it was a firmware from the LSI website and I could even revert the firmware update with one from Dell. Does that mean I could use the firmwares from the OP with the same results? Also, if I were to try, which of the firmwares on the OP are candidate(s)? Thanks. Only one would be the 1068E package.

RimBlock, yes they meantion that to protect themself, should you brick it. I also stated to do any of this at your own risk but clear many have done it and successfully. Many consumer board have weird configurations, some slot are only meant for video cards, etc.. this is not only with LSI cards. X1pheR, I dont have any account of anyone here flashing the Dell Perc 6/i, seems it has a LSI 1068 controller, so it may be possible. If you do try let us know how it works out. As to reverting you should obtain that from Dell site first before proceeding.

I fixed the same typo's I had in the 1.5/3 Gs firmware folder now for the SAS1068E package. And added the sasflash version 1.24 per Axeman's link above (yes it 1.24 version, actually older than the one I had in my package which is 1.28 in both x86 and x64) just updated the OP link and added the LSI konledgeBase article on 3TB drive support "16399, Using drives >2TB in capacity with LSI SAS HBAs". So if you are having issues, you can rename the "sasflash-1.24.exe" to either sasflash_x86.exe or sasflash_x64.exe. Really cant tell why the 1.28 version does not work for some... Original SAS FLASH in my package: **************************************************************************** LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility. SASFlash Version 1.28.00.00 (2010.12.08) Copyright © 2006-2010 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. **************************************************************************** The additional SAS FLASH from the supermicro site: **************************************************************************** LSI Corporation SAS FLASH Utility. SASFlash Version 1.24.00.00 (2009.11.13) Copyright © 2006-2007 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. ****************************************************************************

I will be leaving work soon, so let me know how you make out or any questions that arise. I know the feeling of wanting to get something done

Hmm, I had typo's in some of the batch files and remember this earlier on when I saw them myself, I fixed them, but maybe with the transition to another media share site, I some how posted the wrong one? Anyway, I update the source please re-download with the new link in the OP. Sorry about that.

exactly - there are no drives attached to the card... yes, device manager reports it properly... 1 thing i noticed, is that the batch calls sas2flash.exe but the actual file in the directory is sasflash.exe... i created a directory called p20 and renamed 3Gs_6Gs_SATA_Support_Firmware to 6G. I opened CMD and selected Run as Administrator. CD to P20 then CD to 6G. if i run this: my output is this: One second let me check the source....

So you saw the controller cards bios post on these devices and once you logged into the W7 OS, do you see the controller in the device manager? Open a command prompt as an administrator. Dir over to the directory of the source you downloaded (usb stick or folder you copied it to locally). Then try.

It should work with any HD that has a 3Gb or 6Gb intereface. I have no access at the moment, but when you get into the cards bios (ctrl-C) go to the screen were you see the actual drive(s) attached, cursor over (with the arrow keys) to the right you will the current connection speed to the drive(s) (which should show either 3Gb or 6Gb) and if you scroll over to the right once more it will show you Max. Speeds the controller is capable of, which should be 6Gb.

I added an additional note to the OP with the "Failed to initialize PAL" message. Hope the new file share provider I moved the source to is working out better for all. P.S. jkm9000, dont through the card out the window, until I am standing outside the window to catch it. If you have no luck, PM me and ship me the card and return shipping and I will do it for you. Hope you find another MB, try at work, friend, etc...

Thanks for taking the time out and finding these articles Zeron. I know I and most people dont have issues flashing these LSI cards, its a walk in the park, so these seems MB related issues, and again just to flash, they should work fine on those systems though. So thanks for finding those articles (from the horses mouth).

I copied all the source files to another file sharing service (Mediafire) all links should be good now. Please try again and report any problems. Disabling boot support is not critical just keeps you away from headaches and posts faster. Maybe MB's that are more geared to the consumer market have problems with these type/style cards and/or their bios. This really should be easy stuff. As I meantioned before if you can get it flashed and configured the way you wish via someone elses PC/Server and put back into yours its worth doing. I have created most of the zip's and testing off of a SuperMicro motherboard and a Dell Presicion T3500 (whatever MB that is in there).

Nope, it should go right into the lsi bios, what type of MB, any other cards installed?

Are you guys saying the download links are not working? I logged into the fileswap site, all the zip's are there and available to download? I tried a few, all were good, I just tried the mega and recieved: Error downloading: LSI MegaRAID SAS2008 Controller.zip The storage node this file is currently on is currently undergoing emergency maintenance and is currently unavailable. How long has this been down?

2. I disabled the interrupt inside the card's firmware Why ? The interrupt is just used to be able to boot from drives on the card, and tends to mess up boot order to the USB. +1 (I have a screenshot I added to the OP for this, a while back.) Glad everyone is having good success. I have been out of pocket so trying to catch up on the forums. If anyone is still having any problems, just post and I will try to help. Someone posted about the Fujitsu D2607, that is a Mega card, please make sure you follow the steps to wipe that card clean and then upgrade to a SAS2008 Bios/Firmware, should work, but dont have anyones record for that card, so becareful.

1. On, the IBM M1015 is a LSI MegaRAID with a SAS2008 chipsets in it. 2. The OP explains how to convert (wipe the bios/firmware) of a IBM M1015 and apply a LSI 2008 IT Firmware to it for varies purposes, one being to use it with unRAID. To be clear, there no such thing as a 9220-8i (I know its printed on the back of the IBM M1015 but if you ask LSI they'll tell you there's no such product as the 9220-8i).

The 3TB drive support is listed for each LSI chipset in the OP. Currently the only chipset that did NOT support 3TB drives are LSI 1068E chipsets.

There are a few posts out there regarding this, just do a search, the poll and some explanations is here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12616.0

Thanks for posting your results guys. Can you PM me the ".sbr" file from the Intel RS2WC080 card, I am collecting them. Thanks.

1 cycle each. Running multiple cycles by using the -c flag would skew the data quite a bit, since on the 2nd, 3rd, etc. pass the previous cycle's post-read doubles as the current cycle's pre-read. I will be running a second cycle on each drive (not using the -c flag) at a later date, so I'll report those numbers once I have them. I'm currently setting up three of my test servers with 2-3 drives each to test out the SIL3132 controller as well as the Biostar A880G+ motherboard for 3TB drive compatibility. Thanks, I just finished preclearing (3) 3tb drives as well one being a Hitachi 7K and the other two Hitachi 5K drives. All at the same time. To give you some stats. (all precleared 2-Cycles successfully) 1-Cycle: 7K = 30:40:00 5K #1 = 37:36:30 5k #2 = 37:45:16 Xeon in a SuperMicro MB, all three drives on one 6Gbps LSI SAS Controller. Using Preclear 1.12beta

Hey Raj, how many cycles for the times above?

3TB drives on LSI SAS1068E chipset controllers History: I purchased a Hitachi 3TB 5k drive after 5.0Beta7 was release. I precleared it with version 1.12 preclear_disk.sh script (2 cycles) it passed. I added it to my unprotected array and unRAID created a GPT and formatted the drive and I had all 3TB available to me. I tested this drive on both my onboard SAS2008 and LSI SAS2116 controllers. Both cards supported not only initializing the drive but having all 3TB's available. Last night I headed over to my friends home with this 3TB 5k Drive above. We shutdown his unRAID server which was running 5.0Beta9 and has (3) IBM BR10i's Controllers (LSI 1068E chipset controllers) in it, each one of the three controllers was already flashed to the last firmware update available by LSI (P20) in IT mode ( The one offered in th OP ). We slapped this 3TB drive into his Norco drive carrier and inserted it into an empty slot on his Norco 4224. Powered on the server and hit CTRL-C to enter the LSI BIO's configurator. The drive was initialized and showed a negotiated interface speed of 3.0 Gbps (Which is the max. a 1068E chipset can do). So clearly NO problem with the controller initializing the 3TB hard drive. Drum roll here... Once the unRAID server booted up, we selected to add it as a cache drive (because his parity drive was 2TB and I wasn't giving him the drive to keep just to test ) And the result was it showed up as 2.2TB. We then shutdown the server and proceeded to test this drive on the other 2 IBM BR10i's, each time shutting down and moving the drive to a different slot which put it on a different IBM BR10i controller. Each time unRAID booted up it saw the drive as havinge 2.2TB available. If anyone can show the same facts with all 3TB available on a 1068E chipset controller under unRAID (any re-branded, firmware, s/n of drive, etc..), please share. Until then we now have our answer. I do want to add the 1068E chipset controllers are solid, excellent performing cards, tried and true! They just cannot support offering greater than 2.2TB of a 3TB Drive.