March 19, 201313 yr The SuperTrak EX 6Gb/s Experience … and the way around it Recently, I bought an SuperTrak EX 6Gb/s SATA3 RAID controller to build a NAS system with 8x 4TB Seagate Constellation ES3 (ST4000NM0033) SATA-3 hard-drives. After assembling the NAS system (I used an existing AMD FX 8-core server) and booting the system to the SuperTrak BIOS, I was forced to learn that the SuperTrak Ex 6Gb7s RAID controller would not support hard-drives larger than 2TB. I fired up the browser and visited promise.com to see if there was a firmware available. It turned out, Promise Technology Inc. hadn’t updated the SuperTrak Ex 6Gb/s product support page since 2010. The compatibility-list hadn’t listed any 3 or 4 TB drives. Oddly enough the product spec indicated volumes larger than 2TB would be supported. Next, I called Promise Support, but unfortunately nobody answered. I kept trying it for two more days. It seemed the world turned against me. I was stuck with 8x 4 TB hard-drives and a useless piece of sh***y RAID controller. Sending them support mails, turned out no support planned for >2TB hard-drives. Eventually telling me to fuck off and not bother them any longer. WOW! I was really stunned. That had never occurred to me before in my 20 years of IT experience. So, definitely no support from Promise Support. A couple days later, I accidently came across an article about cross-flashing firmware (http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/29059-sas2008-lsi92409211-firmware-files/). That could be a chance to finally get this piece of crap going, I thought. So, I started an investigation, gathering all information I could find about the controller and the components used to build it. However, to make a long story short, it turned out that NEC of Japan (http://www.58support.nec.co.jp/global/download/SystemConfigurationGuide/100/TEC10002/05_RAID_Controller.pdf) sells that same controller under its own brand, named N8103-134. Bingo! To my surprise and anger, the latest N8103-134 firmware supports >2TB hard-drives. Promise Technology staff blatantly told me a lie straight into my face. ... so much for their "promise". I downloaded the firmware and tried to flash the controller with the new version, which failed. The flash-software ptiflash.exe performed some checks against the controller and the firmware-image to make sure one cannot simply do a cross-flash. I fired up my favorite disassembly tool, loaded the ptiflash.exe and started looking for the proper location which would perform the check and print an error if the device info did not match. After poking around approx. 10-15 min. I found the locations that required a patch. Luckily, Promise Technology’s tech staff was so lame, they didn’t do anything fancy to protect the executable file. It turns out, after approx. 30 minutes I was able to flash a NEC N8103-134 firmware to a SuperTrak Ex 6Gb/s controller and enable larger than >2TB hard-drive support. If you’d also like to use the SuperTrak Ex 6Gb/s controller for the reason you bought it, here are the locations in the ptiflash.exe file you have to change to be able to cross-flash the NEC N8103-134 firmware to the SuperTrak Ex 6Gb/s controller: 00000D40: 81 90 00000D41: 7E 90 00000D42: F8 90 00000D43: 23 90 00000D44: 42 90 00000D45: 75 EB 00000D47: E9 90 00000D48: 25 90 00000D49: 00 90 00000D4A: 81 90 00000D4B: 7E 90 00000D4C: FA 90 00000D4D: 33 90 00000D4E: 10 90 00000D4F: 74 90 00000D50: 03 90 00000D51: E9 90 00000D52: 1B 90 00000D53: 00 90 00000DC2: 81 90 00000DC3: 7E 90 00000DC4: F8 90 00000DC5: 23 90 00000DC6: 42 90 00000DC7: 74 90 00000DC8: 03 EB 00000DC9: E9 0C 00000DCA: 25 90 00000DCB: 00 90 00000DCC: 81 90 00000DCD: 7E 90 00000DCE: FA 90 00000DCF: 33 90 00000DD0: 10 90 00000DD1: 74 90 00000DD2: 03 90 00000DD3: E9 90 00000EF6: 39 A3 00000EF7: 06 F4 00000EF8: F4 1B 00000EF9: 1B 39 00000EFA: 75 C0 00000EFB: 03 8B 00000EFC: E9 46 00000EFD: 0A 06 00000EFE: 00 A3 00000EFF: 83 F2 00000F00: 3E 1B 00000F01: F4 8B 00000F02: 1B 46 00000F03: 00 0C 00000F04: 74 A3 00000F05: 03 F8 00000F06: E9 1B 00000F07: 56 8B 00000F08: 00 46 00000F09: 8B 0A 00000F0A: 46 A3 00000F0B: 06 F6 00000F0C: 39 1B 00000F0D: 06 EB 00000F0E: F2 3C 00000F0F: 1B 90 00000F10: 75 90 00000F11: 03 90 00000F12: E9 90 00000F13: 0A 90 00000F14: 00 90 00000F15: 83 90 00000F16: 3E 90 00000F17: F2 90 00000F18: 1B 90 00000F19: 00 90 00000F1A: 74 90 00000F1B: 03 90 00000F1C: E9 90 00000F1D: 40 90 00000F1E: 00 90 00000F1F: 8B 90 00000F20: 46 90 00000F21: 0C 90 00000F22: 39 90 00000F23: 06 90 00000F24: F8 90 00000F25: 1B 90 00000F26: 75 90 00000F27: 03 90 00000F28: E9 90 00000F29: 0A 90 00000F2A: 00 90 00000F2B: 83 90 00000F2C: 3E 90 00000F2D: F8 90 00000F2E: 1B 90 00000F2F: 00 90 00000F30: 74 90 00000F31: 03 90 00000F32: E9 90 00000F33: 2A 90 00000F34: 00 90 00000F35: 8B 90 00000F36: 46 90 00000F37: 0A 90 00000F38: 39 90 00000F39: 06 90 00000F3A: F6 90 00000F3B: 1B 90 00000F3C: 75 90 00000F3D: 03 90 00000F3E: E9 90 00000F3F: 0A 90 00000F40: 00 90 00000F41: 83 90 00000F42: 3E 90 00000F43: F6 90 00000F44: 1B 90 00000F45: 00 90 00000F46: 74 90 00000F47: 03 90 00000F48: E9 90 00000F49: 14 90 00000F4A: 00 90 Each line contains: <OFFSET> : <OLD-VALUE> <NEW-VALUE> Open the file ptiflash.exe your favorite hex-editor and navigate to the given offset. Change the value from <OLD-VALUE> to <NEW-VALUE>. Make sure the <OLD-VALUE> has been at the given location before you changed it, otherwise it might be a different version of ptiflash.exe and the patch may fail. As always, do it at your own risk. Your device may be damaged and your warranty may be lost. However, this was certainly the first and THE LAST Promise Technology controller I ever bought. NEVER AGAIN. Promise Technology just wants your money and DOES NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT CUSTOMERS! p.s.: ... hello Promise Technology, this is for you: ....................../´¯/) ....................,/¯../ .................../..../ ............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸ ........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\ ........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...') .........\.................'...../ ..........''...\.......... _.·´ ............\..............( ..............\.............\...
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