New SAS card installed & getting errors on drives connected

[thingie2]

I recently bought a 2nd hand SAS card (been using a PCI-E SATA card for a while, but decided to change due to the claims of a SAS card being better), but since installing, I've been getting drive errors.

 

I had 3 of my drives connected to it. Initially, it was a single drive, started with a couple of read errors, then write errors, so I wondered if it was a cable issue. I swapped the drive to a different connector on the SAS cable, and rebuilt the drive with errors. All was ok again for a day or so, then a different drive got read errors, and then another one (all from the SAS card). Thankfully no more write errors, so I didn't have to rebuild anything.

 

I've now connected everything up avoiding the SAS card again until I can resolve this issue, but I've attached a diagnostics log from the first drive that got errors, does anyone have any pointers to what I need to do to resolve this?

tower-diagnostics-20231023-1729.zip

[JorgeB]

It's not logged as a disk problem, since the firmware is quite old I would start by updating it.

[thingie2]

Thanks, I'll try to find the axact model number of the card & see if I can find updated firmware for it.

 

Is there any way to check it's been fixed, other than just hooking my array up to it & hope it doesn't cause any problems when errors do occur?

[JorgeB]

It's a SAS2008, look for the firmware for the 9211-8i.

 

18 minutes ago, thingie2 said:

Is there any way to check it's been fixed,

You can confirm it's been updated, but then need to re-test to see if it helps with the current issues.

 

[thingie2]

Cheers, I've just checked the sticker on the card, and apparently it's a 9200-8i, so I'll try finding updated firmware for it & giving it a go 1 drive at a time & hope it behaves from there.

[JorgeB]

39 minutes ago, thingie2 said:

it's a 9200-8i

It's the same as the 9211-8i.

[thingie2]

Just now, JorgeB said:

It's the same as the 9211-8i.

Awesome, I'll try the 9211-8i Firmware then, as I can't find anything specifically for the 9200-8i! I saw a few references implying they were the same, but nothing concrete.

[JorgeB]

Latest version is 20.00.07.00

[thingie2]

Right, got the card flashed, now I just need to plug a drive or 2 into it & leave it for a while & confirm if the error comes back or not.

[thingie2]

Unfortunatly, even after the SAS card firmare update, I got some further read errors yesterday evening.

 

Any other ideas?

 

tower-diagnostics-20231031-0833.zip

Edited October 31, 2023 by thingie2

[JorgeB]

Try disabling spin down to test, problems appear to start at spin up.

[thingie2]

OK, I've turned off spindown on the 2 drives connected to the SAS card.

 

If it does turn out to be OK without the drives spinning down, what are my options? Is there anything other than keep them spun up, or don't use the card?

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, thingie2 said:

If it does turn out to be OK without the drives spinning down, what are my options? Is there anything other than keep them spun up, or don't use the card?

Use a different controller (or different disks), sometimes they don't go well together.

[thingie2]

So It's not due to the spindown... I've just had a bunch of write errors on one of the drives connected to the controller, even with spindown disabled for that drive.

 

Any other ideas?

tower-diagnostics-20231031-1756.zip

[JorgeB]

If it's not spin down related power/connection would be the next suspects, could be an issue on the power or SATA side.