New build finished - except it doesn't like my Adaptec 6805E

[Slimer]

So I moved the stuffing out of my old UnRaid box to it's new home last night. Nothing too exciting, other than the damn SuperMicro drive cages not having slots for the tabs in the hard drive slots. A Kreg clamp made short work of that problem. I've also decided to upgrade the power supply, as the old dog is missing some of the new connectors and a modular supply would be nice.

 

Today was power-up day and it came to life the first time.  I was actually worried about the RAM, as I bought it for another board, but did not like the slot layout. It booted into the BIOS, so I updated my settings and restarted. But as soon as I setup my SSD Raid array on my Adaptec 6805E it would no longer boot. I know the 6805E is overkill, but it came out of my Media box, which is getting merged with the UnRaid box once I get the VM going.  I upgraded the BIOS on the MB and the Adaptec, but it still hangs when it boots. I even tried downgrading the Adaptec, as I read about BIOS issues, but nothing. I'm going to stick another M015 in it instead. It was also a PITA to get it to boot off the USB (damn UEFI); I had to force the USB to HDD and try a few BIOS settings. Horrible BIOS setup.

 

On the bright side UnRaid came to life like it never changed homes, all the drives were recognized and I just had to start the Array.

 

MB: ASUS Crosshair V Formula Z

Case: Antec 1200

CPU: AMD 8350FX

GPU: MSI R7 370

PSU: EVGA G2 750

Memory: GSkill F3-1600C9Q-32GXM

Cache: 4 AData 240GB

Raid 0: IBM M015

Sata: SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8

Array:

Parity: WD Red Pro 4TB

Primary: WD Red 4TB (4)

Orphans: Seagate 2 TB (5)

 

 

[SpaceInvaderOne]

To be honest I am not 100% sure of what i am telling you as i have never used a sata card in my raid.

I beleive that the card should not be run in raid mode to must be run in standard sata mode. This is because unraid needs direct access to each drive as it manages them not a raid controller.

I maybe wrong and i am sure someone more knowledgeable than me can advise

[Slimer]

To be honest I am not 100% sure of what i am telling you as i have never used a sata card in my raid.

I beleive that the card should not be run in raid mode to must be run in standard sata mode. This is because unraid needs direct access to each drive as it manages them not a raid controller.

I maybe wrong and i am sure someone more knowledgeable than me can advise

 

Thanks, that's what the SuperMicro card does, the Adaptec card is to give me Raid 0 for my Cache. A little pointless beyond two SSDs, but Meh. I will also use it store my VMs. I actually used this card in the old UnRaid box with a some older HDs, but performance was not great, so I moved it to my Media box as Raid 1.

[sonofdbn]

Not sure if it applies to your MB, but came across this from a FAQ on the Asus website http://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1009608/

 

For the Adaptec 6805E it says "There are some compatibility problem of latest Adaptec firmware 19147. If it’s necessary for you to use this controller, please downgrade the firmware to previous version 19109 or contact Adaptec for technical support."

 

Don't know what version you downgraded to.

[Slimer]

Not sure if it applies to your MB, but came across this from a FAQ on the Asus website http://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1009608/

 

For the Adaptec 6805E it says "There are some compatibility problem of latest Adaptec firmware 19147. If it’s necessary for you to use this controller, please downgrade the firmware to previous version 19109 or contact Adaptec for technical support."

 

Don't know what version you downgraded to.

 

Thanks for looking it up; that was the downgrade I tried. 

 

I might look in the BIOS again, but I doubt it will help. I even tried removing the SSDs, as I know the 6805E has a limit on what it will support, but it did not help.

[Slimer]

I decided to pull the Marvell controller (SuperMicro) to see if the Adaptec 6805E would boot and it did. So I switched the PCIE slots for the controllers and it still boots.  A little surprised to see this in a modern build, but hopefully I have my 1 TB cache now. 

[UtahDeLorean]

Did you get this card working?

It was working in my system and everything seemed fine, but it seemed to cause stability issues and once I pulled this card from my system Unraid became happy again