Hello.  I am getting the parts ready to transition from my 6x1 5TB Intel SW RAID 5 on W2k8 to unRAID.

 

I got a M1015 so I can run 3TB drives.  I got it flashed to the LSI SAS9211-8i IR firmware, but now the card will not allow any system it's in to finish POST.

 

It loads and detects the card and the drives, allows the CRTL-C for card configuration, but never says CRTL-H for webbios.  It just stops there.

 

I have tried it in a Dell Optiplex 740, a GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P, and a ASUS P5LP-LE (Leonite2) motherboard.  They all act the same.  I have tried turning off the on-board sata controllers, setting them to IDE, etc.

 

The GIGABYTE will be the final home for the controller and UNRAID housed in an Antec 1200, i just wanted to get unRAID running 2 new 3TB WD RED drives to move all of the data off the 5TB RAID to the temp machine.

 

any help or ideas how to proceed would be appreciated.

I got it flashed to the LSI SAS9211-8i IR firmware...

Did you mean IT firmware here?  Because that is what I flashed on my M1015s.  The original IBM firmware doesn't work with unRAID but it doesn't cause boot problems.  I've never tried the IR firmware but I don't believe it will work with unRAID either but I have no personal experience to prove that.

I got it flashed to the LSI SAS9211-8i IR firmware...

Did you mean IT firmware here?  Because that is what I flashed on my M1015s.  The original IBM firmware doesn't work with unRAID but it doesn't cause boot problems.  I've never tried the IR firmware but I don't believe it will work with unRAID either but I have no personal experience to prove that.

 

I did flash IR.  I am very much regretting it.  I was thinking about doing some RAID 0 underneath unRAID.

I did flash IR.  I am very much regretting it.  I was thinking about doing some RAID 0 underneath unRAID.

 

I put the card in a HP DL380G6 server, and it boots fine, I was able to flash the card again, this time to IT firmware version P14.

 

But alas, my GIGABYTE motherboard still does not complete POST.

 

Any recommendations on compatible motherboards?

I've yet to find a SuperMicro (Intel based) MB that doesn't work with one also my Tyan S5512GM2NR works well with my M1015s.  I'm sure others can recommend other boards that work with M1015s as well.  Almost forgot about my Intel DH77EB MB it also works well with M1015s.

I had the same problem in my p35 board.

 

What i did was redo the entire process of flashing but on step 5 not flash the bios only the firmware.

 

i.e

 

instead of

sas2flsh.exe -l Flashlog.txt -o -f 2118ir.bin -b mptsas2.rom

do

sas2flsh.exe -l Flashlog.txt -o -f 2118ir.bin

 

 

this will cause your controller no to display anything at boot time but still work as a controller in unraid (also boots faster this way).

 

this way i can use the controller in my gigagyte board

 

sas2flsh.exe -l Flashlog.txt -o -f 2118ir.bin

 

 

Thank you, this worked perfectly.  Somehow this needs to be more prominent in the controllers post, that the BIOS is something you should not do unless you already KNOW that your MB will like it.

 

If I didn't have a server at work I would have been stuck.  As I said earlier all of the machines I had at home would not even POST with the card in it once the LSI BIOS was installed.

 

Onto PreClears of the 2 more 3TB drives that show up today and the calculating MD5s for all of my files to make sure the copy from the Intel RAID to a USB drive to UnRAID is clean.

 

Thanks again.