I could really use some help making this Dell H700 card work with unRaid.  I got a random old system that holds plenty of drives to be a great unRaid system, but i can not get unRaid to see the drives through this raid card.  I have been spending a couple of nights searching through and some people are flashing these cards with different firmware to get them to work as JBOD.  Does anyone have any experience with this or that can help point me to the correct firmware so i do not accidentally brick the H700.

 

Best case senario, I would like to transfer my drives out of my old unRaid case and put them into this new one.  I have tested with some extra drives and trying to build Raid 0 drives of each drive does not work.  I also tried initializing the drives (which i really do not want to do since it will erase all of my data) but unRaid still could not see the drives.  That is why im trying to enable JBOD on H700.

 

As always, thanks for the help!

 

Drabert

The more i read and search for, the more i feel like this is probably a failed dream.  Going to have to find another card.

 

Is there another raid card with JBOD that i could insert into a Dell system that will work with the dell SAS cables and backplane?

Come on guys... please

 

Has anyone tried using a Dell to build their system? Could really use some assistance or direction.

The only raid cards we know that work are the Areca and 3ware/AMCC late models.

A driver probably needs to be in the kernel for the H700 to work.

If you could identify the driver, perhaps limetech will include it in the kernel.

 

 

Hint maybe you could use some spare drives and try to install a modern recent distro to identify the driver.  Other then that you are treading in uncharted waters with that card.

H700 is a tough one.

 

H200 is a better choice as it is SAS2008 based and can be cross-flashed to IT firmware.

 

Or if your HDs are 2TB or smaller you can get the SAS 6i/R (not PERC) and cross-flash with the 1068e IT firmware

Thanks guys... i didnt have it flag me for replies but thank you for responding.  I found a way to flash the h700 that i am going to try this weekend.  I had a spare card that only had one SAS connector and my system keeps dropping drives so i am going to try going back to the h700.

 

Is there another card that has 2 mini SAS connectors that will work with > 3TB drives.  I would hate to lock myself into 2TB drives.  the 3ware and Areca cards are close to 400 bucks and thats a bit more than i want to spend if i do not have to.

 

Drabert

..the IBM ServeRAID M1015 ...is LSI2008 based and can be flashed to HBA/IT-mode.

Works with unRAID V5RC6 upwards and is very famous around the fellow unRAIDers.

 

Your Dell system will be in need to provide a PCIe-x8 slot for it.

The only raid cards we know that work are the Areca and 3ware/AMCC late models.

A driver probably needs to be in the kernel for the H700 to work.

 

As far as I understand it, Drabert does not need a RAID card - he's trying to flash the H700 to JBOD mode.

 

It seems to me that there are a number of cards which would meet the requirements: the 'standard' Supermicro SASLP-MV8 card or any of a number of LSI2008-based cards - the M1015, being very popular. I'm perfectly satisfied with my AOC-USAS2-L8i.

It looks like the AOC-USAS2-L8i should be perfect for me.  How many drives can it handle?

 

Thanks for the suggestion, if the flashing does not work this weekend i will probably order one on monday.

It looks like the AOC-USAS2-L8i should be perfect for me.  How many drives can it handle?

 

It can handle eight drives directly, or 63 if using expanders.

 

Just one word of caution - the AOC-U series cards are 'UIO' cards.  This is a proprietary Supermicro specification but, in essence, they are simply mirror image PCIe cards (with the components and backplate on the 'wrong' side).  Be warned that you cannot use the backplate which comes with the card with a standard case/motherboard.  However, I deliberately chose to go with this card because it puts the heat-generating components on the top surface when mounted in a standard tower case.  We all know that hot air rises, so it seems wrong, to me, to place the components on the lower surface.

 

A little bit of history:

(IBM) PCs originally came in desktop cases, with the motherboard horizontal, and the ISA bus cards mounted vertically.  Then tower cases came into being and were oriented with the components on the ISA expansion cards mounted on the upper surface of the cards.  Then, when IBM designed the PCI bus, in the early 90s, they placed the components on the other side of the card.  This meant that, in tower configuration, the components are on the lower surface of the card. - I'm not sure of their reasoning for doing this but I seem to remember that there were some motherboards designed with both ISA and PCI connectors on some expansion card slots - this would have only been possible by making this change in orientation.  Anyway, the result is that we're now stuck with an expansion bus which places the components on the lower surface of the card when in a tower configuration.

The Dell PERC H200 can either be flashed with a Dell IT firmware or with a LSI firmware.

You can easily find a guide searching on Google "DELL H200 Flash to IT firmware"