Hello,

 

Ill start by sayin I'm a bit new to this.  Just built up my NAS, started it up and everything seemed fine but it appears the LSI 9211-8i I got might not be compatible with my Motherboard and the list of options doesn't seem to lend itself to anything useable for Unraid.

 

I am running a Asus EX-B150M-V3 that only has 4 Sata ports and I'd like to be able to use 9 (1 for my SSD). When I powered up the SYS ERROR light was lite up on the Controller (now there is nothing) and neither my Bios or Unraid was able to detect the card. I ran a test with a totally different card to se if maybe it was the connection but the other card showed up in Bios no problem.

 

I was able to find a document stating which "cards" are compatible with this motherboard but they all seem to be no good for Unraid or maybe I am missing something. If anyone can take a look and offer advice it would be much appreciated as I have been searching for hours/days with no results. I am open to any options, including alternatives to hba's. Whatever it takes to get 9 drives running, I am not picky. Thank you in advance.

 

The list of options that Asus supplies are below, or the device report link is here: https://www.asus.com/supportonly/ex-b150m-v3/helpdesk_qvl/

You didn't say if you put it in the x16 slot, or the x1 slot, but according to the manual it mentions on page 1-4 that the x16 slot is graphics card only, and you have to use the x1 slots for other cards.

 

The slots should be PCIe3 which means 1GB/s, so I thought maybe it is a compatibility issue, but the 9260 mentioned is also PCIe 2.0, and uses a 2108 chip vs a 2008 for your card, so if you did try the PCIe x1 slots, it doesn't sound like a compatibility issue, but a broken card. You can try seeing if it gets detected and if so, with sas2flash see if it has firmware and bios on the card or not.

I tried it in the 16x slot. Being a 8x card it wont fit into the 1x slot. Strangely the "other" card I mentioned which is a 1x works perfectly in the 16x.

 

I do also think its the card, I'm just a little gun-shy on tryin to buy that card again.

See if lspci shows something, if it does, somebody could have been trying to flash it wrong, so you can try sas2flash. You could also consider a newer card like a 9207 or 9217 which are pcie 3, but cost the same or less.

So I ended up changing the entire way of doing this. As per JorgeB's recommendations on this post. I only need a total of 9 Sata ports and there are 4 with my motherboard, I added the additional 5 with a "5 ports: JMicron JMB585 (PCIe 3.0 x4 - x2 electrically)" as mentioned in this post. Plugged it and there are zero issues with compatibility and its running great out of the 16x slot. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07ST9CPND

 

Solid card.  Have one in each of my servers.  Never have had an issue.