Today I installed:

LSI 6Gbps SAS HBA LSI 9200-8i = (9211-8I)

with 2 hard drives attached to it.

I am unable to mount/find the hard drives on the unraid

 

 

Attached Diagnostics

 

tower-diagnostics-20230311-1212.zip

Can you get into the HBA's BIOS?

 

Is it in a slot that is disabled?

 

 

when I open up my bios, and go to explore hardware

The 3rd full length slot (as my other 2 gpus are in the other full length pcie slot), says: PCIe x4 slot (PCI_E5, Gen 3): Empty

This card is a x8 gen 2 card.

My board is MSI MPG Z490 GAMING CARBON WIFI

Manual:  https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7C73v1.2.pdf

Your HBA card is x8, so it needs an x8 or larger slot. So your E5 slot, which is x4, won't support your HBA card.

59 minutes ago, MrChip said:

Your HBA card is x8, so it needs an x8 or larger slot. So your E5 slot, which is x4, won't support your HBA card.

Not completely correct.  Physically, the 5th slot on that board is a full length x16 slot but, when the other full-length slots are occupied, slot 5 supports 4 PCIe lanes only.  The first two x16 slots are in x8 and x8 PCIe mode.

 

The card needs at least an x8 slot physically (which the x16 slot 5 is) but it can run on fewer than 8 PCIe lanes.  Many Unraid users are running these cards with only 4 PCIe lanes.  Since the card is PCIe 2.0, it will limit bandwidth, but for HDDs there will still be ~200 MB/s available for each HDD after overhead.  This is enough for most HDDs.  It would severely limit SSD bandwidth but they should not be connected to these cards anyway due lack of TRIM support.

Edited March 11, 20233 yr by Hoopster

1 hour ago, Hoopster said:

... Many Unraid users are running these cards with only 4 PCIe lanes.  Since the card is PCIe 2.0, it will limit bandwidth, but for HDDs there will still be ~200 MB/s available for each HDD after overhead.  This is enough for most HDDs.  ...

My mistake. I actually passed over this card because I thought it required 8 lanes. I can use it if it can run on 4 lanes. Thanks for the correction.

Hoopster: Thats essentially what I read, that the PCI x8 gen 2 will work in my PCI x4 gen 3 slot, with the note of lack of performance for SSD and I am running HDDs. I also have limitations of 1 Gbit Network the bigger bottleneck in my system, and I use it as a Plex Server mostly.

However I am still trying to get my card to work.

I wonder if its a bad card, or a setting on my bios, but I can not find anything regarding it

Edited March 12, 20233 yr by The Acer

15 minutes ago, The Acer said:

I wonder if its a bad card, or a setting on my bios, but I can not find anything regarding it

With my 9211-8i clone (Dell H310), I had to put tape over pins B5 and B6 before the HBA would be recognized by my non-Dell motherboard.  This may only be a problem with the Dell clones of the 9211-8i cards and I don't believe this applies to LSI branded HBA cards.

 

Also worth looking into is the fact that some MB/BIOS will disable an x4 PCIe slot if PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs are installed.  There are only so many PCIe lanes available (usually 24 on Intel consumer boards) so not everything the board supports as far as PCIe devices can be used simultaneously.

Edited March 12, 20233 yr by Hoopster

2 hours ago, Hoopster said:

With my 9211-8i clone (Dell H310), I had to put tape over pins B5 and B6 before the HBA would be recognized by my non-Dell motherboard.  This may only be a problem with the Dell clones of the 9211-8i cards and I don't believe this applies to LSI branded HBA cards.

 

Also worth looking into is the fact that some MB/BIOS will disable an x4 PCIe slot if PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs are installed.  There are only so many PCIe lanes available (usually 24 on Intel consumer boards) so not everything the board supports as far as PCIe devices can be used simultaneously.

 

It appears on these chipset that is not the case. The NVME will split with the SATA, but the x4 PCIe is always dedicated

The x16 GPU split to x8 and x8, and the 3rd spot is x4

 

I am leaning towards possible faulty hardware, as the hardware explore showed it as "empty" not "disabled"

Try putting hba on E1, gpu on E5, no other pcie and see what bios says

Being my server has water cooled gpu and cpu with rigid pex tubing, not feasible.
So I took my current PC, removed the GPU, and put the card in it.

It does not have a board explorer in BIOS, and the BIOS isnt helpful.

I loaded windows 11 and opened device manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, its lists:

Standard SATA AHCI Controller, PCI Bus 0 (Which is the first slot I put the LSI in) "This device is working properly"

Standard SATA AHCI Controller, PCI Bus 5 (I presume is the on board Sata controller) "This device is working properly"

I have 1 hard drive plugged into the LSI, no hard drives show up. Suggestions? LSI firmware need to be flashed?

Something that occurs to me is are you sure you have the right cables?   The forward and reverse breakout cables look identical but are wired differently.

I looked in your syslog and I can find no sign that any LSI card was detected as there was no attempt to install the drivers for it. 

 

EDIT: Thinking back, when my Unraid server boot up, the first thing that happens is that the LSI BIOS is processed which takes over 10 ten seconds.  That BIOS throws up some message on the attached monitor during that time period.

Edited March 12, 20233 yr by Frank1940

This is the cable I am using:

Amazon cable: Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable, SFF-8087 Host to 4X SATA Target Cable Compatible with Raid Controller Hard Drive - 3.3 Feet / 1m

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BCN48K2H?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

The fact PCI says the card is "EMPTY", and not "Unknown" makes me think I am not at the driver stage yet.

I am thinking its a PCIe Slot not working.

I will get 2x M.2 5 Port Sata Jmb585 Chipset, since my board has PCI to both M.2

And my NVME cache drive, I will get a usb enclosure

 

End result is the same. Close enough for performance, as I am bottlenecked by 1 Gbit internet/ethernet regardless. 

So update, still having issues,
I replaced the motherboard, and I didn't need to install this HBA till today.

(I replaced the motherboard for other issues, figured it was the motherboard giving me issues.) My new board is Gigabyte Z590 Vision G

I expanded more HDDs in the unraid, and my HBA wont recognize any of the drives.

When I go into the BIOS, in my 3 pcie slots, the 1st slot speed says 16x, 2nd slot 4x, doesnt recongize my 3rd slot, where my HBA is, my 2 GPUs are in the first 2 slots. When I look in the manual, there is no place to change settings for PCI speed, figured it must be automatic.

 

Suggestions on where to look next?

tower-diagnostics-20230821-2240.zip

The HBA is not being detected, this is not a software issue, could be a bad HBA or some compatibility issue with that board, do you have another PC where you can test it?

Tried the HBA in my current computer, nothing registers, im thinking faulty HBA