Wody

It probably doesn't matter but how I updated it was using Rufus, where I selected the USB and then FreeDOS, and told it to go, which cleared the drive and put FreeDOS on it, and then I put the content of the Adaptec firmware on it, booted from the USB, and used AFU according to the instructions in the manual. PCIe 2.0/3.0 wouldn't make a difference. It could have an effect on the speed, if at least 8 drives or so are transferring at full speed of their interface, which normally never happens anyway. Otherwise PCIe is supposed to be backward compatible. So the card wouldn't show up at all if it didn't work in the slot. For the controller settings, I have everything set to default. There are no arrays defined, no initialized drives, controller mode is currently expose RAW, backplane mode is IBPI (backplane mode should only affect how the lights on the backplane are blinked). Talking about backplane however, I have a dumb backplane, if you have an expander backplane, that could also affect things since they have firmware too, which may not recognize the drives properly. If you only need one cable for all 8 drives, and a big chip on the backplane, you probably have an expander backplane, if you have to connect a cable per 4 slots, you have a regular one. The third menu is Disk Utilities and usually the safest choice. However, since they are not found during that, it means either the drives are not compatible, or they have broken electronics, which is unlikely since they showed up before. Found out it is a compatibility issue, googling Seagate dual actuator drive not detected and following links finds this FAQ which says they are not supported for hardware RAID, and only newer controllers support them. So the series 8 controllers don't support them, and it has a list of controllers which do support them. The Raid-in-HBA mode is what we've been doing, by not adding them to the array and using RAID: expose raw, or HBA mode on the controller. So that wasn't the issue, but the controller is too old. But you might consider one of the listed HBA's instead so you can't get any raid issues.

I got myself the same controller (although with cache and battery). Came with older firmware (30862), but the menus are the same (and I updated to 33072. A USB with FreeDOS works for that). For Unraid, both Expose RAW and HBA-mode work, but HBA is recommended. If it won't let you, you'll have to unitialize the drives (in disk utilities), this clears them. I would also remove all arrays from the controller for good measure, if there are any. Since the drives are detected but don't work in unraid, try the unassigned devices plugin. Also see if you can do a short SMART test on them, to test the communication with the device. If that works, see if you can pre-clear them using the unassigned devices plus plugin. If that works, then reading and writing works, so formatting should work too. If nothing works, the latest firmware may help like I said before, but if it doesn't, it may be a controller issue, or a cable issue (if you connect the drive directly, some cables don't have pins for the second port on top of the interface which shouldn't make a difference, but it could be that the drive reports two 7TB drives, but the 2nd drive isn't available if the port can't be used).

Not really, just make sure you have the latest firmware. Otherwise, you have to get used to that SAS drives behave differently than SATA ones. With SATA, if something takes longer, the computer waits for it, SAS says I'll get back to you, and the computer can do other things. So you'll notice it is more efficient and so the computer may behave slightly faster or different than you're used to. This also means that with failed SATA drives, it affects everything and you notice soon enough. But for SAS drives, they try to keep working, so if the drive fails, but the electronics still work, you might not notice anything until you need data from the drive. Of course with unraid you get the notifications something is wrong, and you won't lose data, but it is very different.

You can also use a new USB with a trial-version of Unraid (or buy a 2nd copy, in case you need a backup-server), so the systems are the same. Then you can use unassigned devices to link the shares and copy everything from one to the other, without getting other operating systems involved (although it would work too).

Only thing you might want to look out for when you get the system is if the HBA-card has the latest firmware, which you can download from this page. Since the last version is from this year, it probably isn't installed on the server yet. It also has a pretty weird motherboard, you can get the manual, BIOS and BMC-firmware from this page. The system itself has a page too which is here which has links to the manual and some of the same files too. The backplane has a manual too which should be this one.

That card came from a Dell storage appliance, like the Dell SC8000 and probably has special firmware to only work with those devices. You'll have to flash the firmware yourself before it will show up. Edit: The latest firmware is here: https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/12354745

Every drive has platters in them, where the data is stored. These platters often contain defects, and the drive normally would detect these bad areas, stop using them, and instead use some of the spare space reserved for the purpose instead. This normally happens automatically, and you wouldn't notice it happening, until this spare space runs out. So, the fact that the drive can't be read, and tells you, means that there is something seriously wrong with it, and the entire drive should not be used anymore, and should be replaced as soon as possible. What I would do, is stop using the drive, move any data on it to other drives, and remove it from the array once empty.

This suggests that either the drive is reporting something, or the firmware is trying something that one or the other (no longer) understands or goes wrong, so updating the firmware would be the first step. The release notes under the documentation describe a bunch of things that could lead to the error that they fixed as well.

I've noticed that when you change drives, or replace them, the BIOS detects it on start-up and may alter the boot-order, even if you change nothing else. I'd first try the boot-menu during startup to select the UEFI USB-unRAID drive to see if it boots, and if it does, check your BIOS settings for the boot-order.

In your diagnostics in the logs it shows the card is found (an adaptec 8885), although with firmware build 33072 from 2016 instead of the latest one, which is 33556 from 2021 (assuming I have the right card, so verify it looks the same) which you can get here. Since the firmware is from 2016, it could be that it just doesn't recognize the drives at all, the 2021 version is from after dual actuator drives, so that wouldn't hurt to install. However, if adaptec raid is anything like lsi raid, you can't pass through drives, and have to add the drives to a raid-array in the card bios, even if you don't actually use raid, before it will pass them through. So you might want to try that as well.

See this thread

Your firmware is version 7, which is very out of date, the latest is 16. The broadcom site has 16.00.10 but there is a version 16.00.12 on another site available. You'll need sas3flash to flash the BIOS and firmware. (without BIOS the computer in the bios-screens wouldn't recognize the cards). If the cable on the SAS port recognizes the SATA drive, then that same cable on the same port should recognize a SAS drive as well. In fact, even if the drive was broken but the electronics still work, it would be recognized. But, it could have the 3.3v issue, so try powering the cable with a molex-to-sata adapter instead of sata-power directly. SAS does have some compatibility issues at times, where certain combinations of drives and controllers don't work, but it's more likely your outdated firmware or a 3.3v issue.

The 9300-16i will work fine with Unraid, but it is a bad choice. It contains 2 SAS-controllers, both have 8 ports connected to it, so it'll use 26w power, which is a lot. a 9300-8i or older would probably be better. Also be careful what you select, the price of 26 euro is just for the cables, the actual card costs 60, the 9300-8i can be had for less than 40. The previous generation, seach for lsi 9207, can be found for the price of the cables (and if you get that, don't forget to select the right cable). Your second link for the cables will work great, although most likely they will only be wired for one SAS channel (if you look at the drive, you'll notice extra pins on top of the connector, which is a 2nd channel). This doesn't matter for unraid, but if you ever want to use this 2nd channel, you'll need new cables. Also, if you want to connect SATA drives to them (which will work fine too) don't get the 1M version, since SATA is only supported for 1m total, including the traces on the motherboard, meaning you may get weird issues (SAS cables can be much longer).

The new cable standard is SFF-8654, and I haven't found any cables to SFF-8087 that aren't for PCIe, but cables from SFF-8643 such as used on the lsi 9300 and 9400 series to SFF-8087 work just fine, both ways too. I've used a 9400 like that for months (but also verified with my 9300). I'm currently using a 9500 with 8654-8643 cables, attached to a PCB-adapter from 8643-8087 and a small 8087-8087 cable (since the limit is 1 meter for sata) in that computer.

According to the datasheet, the D2616 should have a 2108 chip, not a 2008, and that means you have to use Megarec or Megacli or MSM to flash the controller. The latest firmware I can find is 12.15.0-0239 - 1.0.0 from 23 september 2015 and is available here. Since it is a true RAID card, you can not cross-flash it with IR/IT firmware, and it isn't really fit for unRAID although I guess you could build a raid-protected cache-pool or something.

The latest version is 15.10.10.00 from 2017 and the file is available here. It is an .exe file but you can unpack it with 7zip and winrar too (but if you use winrar you can just run it too).

I'm not quoting correctly, but this is what I'm a bit concerned about. For P24 it says FW Package Build = 24.00.00.00 FW Version = 24.00.00.00 Note how yours says 0 and 6, while both say 24. It could be that it is something they added later, and that it is normal, so I tried flashing version P6 to see but it won't flash older firmware, so I can't verify if that is normal or not. Try flashing the P6 version first, and see if it will change the numbers, instead of P7.

How are your bays powered? If it is with a SATA connector, see if you can power it with a Molex connector instead, or use a Molex-to-SATA adapter. You say the drive powers up, but it may be the 3.3v pin issue that is causing the drive to shut down.

Make sure you have the package called 9400_8e_Pkg_P24. For Unraid, you only need the firmware, but if there is a BIOS on there or the UEFI-version of it, you need to flash those too. You can also use storcli on unraid, and if you have unpacked it already, you can just copy the storcli64 file over, no other files are needed. If you put it in for example /usr/bin you don't need to use the path, but if you put it in the current directory, you need to use ./storcli64 with the commands. If you want to back up everything from the card, just in case, use the following: storcli /c0 get bios file=backup_bios storcli /c0 get firmware file=backup_firmware storcli /c0 get mpb file=backup_mpb storcli /c0 get fwbackup file=backup_fwbackup storcli /c0 get nvdata file=backup_nvdata storcli /c0 get flash file=backup_flash Then to flash the firmware, assuming the firmware and bios files are in the current directory. For the firmware: storcli /c0 download file=HBA_9400-8e_SAS_SATA_Profile.bin For the BIOS: storcli /c0 download bios file=mpt35sas_legacy.rom For the UEFI interface: storcli /c0 download efibios file=mpt35sas_x64.rom After this, Broadcom says you'll want to power down the computer, remove power, wait half a minute or so, and apply power again. However, powering down, and waiting a bit and starting up again works too. Just restarting or resetting doesn't always work, because the card may stay powered on.

The 9300-16i is cheap, but its main chip can only handle 8 devices, so there is two on the card, making it use a lot of power, about 27w, and heat. If possible get a 9305 (didn't look for the 16i version, but the 24i uses only 16w), a 9400-16i uses about 12w, and a 9500-16i uses 9w. The 9600 is a new design for sas 4, so that uses about 17w for the 16i.

Both the 9207 and 9300 have ir and it firmware, so as soon as it identifies as LSI you can flash one or the other, the 9207 will identify as a 9217 in ir mode, and the 9300 as a 9311. But it may require reformatting the drives, because of the extra raid-information the cards want to put on the drive, and of course ir mode is not recommended for unraid.

How many devices per port depends on the port, SFF 8087 and SFF 8643 (the 9300 uses the 8643) run 4 devices per port. More modern cards use SFF 8654 which has two versions, one for 8 devices, and a smaller version with 4. If you want to connect them from a card that has one of those to an enclosure that has SATA connections like your example, you'll want a forward breakout cable, which has a 8643 connector break into 4 SATA connectors. There are also reverse breakout cables which have some wires switched, so they work the other way around. If you get one of those, and connect it, drives won't be detected. As for plug and play, they should be, as in unraid will run them probably a lot better than sata-cards due to the issues those can have, but some motherboards won't boot without a GPU, so you should test that before buying something. For drive limits, the amount of drives you can use is limited by the license you have, but there is no size-limit on drives, they make 24TB HDD's now so you could use those, and bigger SSD's than that. Where I am only 30TB SSDs are available, but they make bigger too, up to 100TB or so. I wouldn't use SSDs for storage though, since they require to refresh their contents once a year, while HDD's can keep their information for years without power. Of course if you're talking about drives that size, you wouldn't worry about what card to use, because you'd have enough money to buy a 9600-24i or the 9700 that are currently in development.

You can unpack it manually, 7zip can unpack the .rpm which will get you a .cpio file. (I usually unpack it on Windows because it's what I am using but it works on linux too and then move the file to a share and then use putty to connect to unraid) You can unpack the cpio with something like cat filename | cpio -idmv (filename is the very long name that I don't want to type here), it'll unpack storcli in opt/megaraid/storcli or something similar, you can then move storcli64 to /usr/bin or another location so you can execute it from anywhere. If you get STORCLI_SAS3.5_P24.zip it'll have a splitpackage.sh included, but that doesn't work (but it is where the cpio commandline comes from).

What I mean is SATA is a great connection, but it isn't very good at doing many things at once. I'm sure you noticed, especially on windows, if you have a list of torrents, and you scroll through them while downloading some, that the computer seems to become unresponsive, because the drive keeps saying 'hold on, wait a bit' and with SATA the computer does that. Other type of connections like SAS and NVMe work a bit different so they have that problem a lot less. A cache drive can solve the issue of having to wait for the drive, but still keep a reasonable speed. With 250mbit you might notice some increase in speed by using a cache, but probably it doesn't matter. With 1gbit you would notice that the drive is really limiting things. If you're going to use a torrent-client inside a VM or docker, you'll want to keep it on a cache or separate drive, but otherwise you won't have issues.

A lot of it depends on your internet-speed. If you have gigabit-internet or better you'll want to store files as fast as possible, so then cache is very useful. But if your internet is comparable to the speed of the drives, then SATA could become a blocker because it can only do one thing at a time. But then if you set unraid to store new files on different drives, you can download 24 things at the same time with full speed.