I have an old server chassis (the Norco 4224) and an RAID card (3ware 9650SE). I have hard drives of a bunch of different sizes. About 17x 2TB and a whole bunch of 4TB, 6TB, and 2x 8TB. Can I string these together as an unRaid server? Or would they be incompatible.

No problem with using different drive sizes, RAID controller isn't recommend though, but it should work.

8 hours ago, johnnie.black said:

No problem with using different drive sizes, RAID controller isn't recommend though, but it should work.

 

Is there something more ideal you'd recommend for the RAID controller? I don't need anything too complicated, as I have a Synology NAS already. I just want to be able to put these old spare drives to use at a fairly good speed for media storage

Any LSI with a SAS2008/2308/3008 chipset in IT mode, e.g., 9201-8i, 9211-8i, 9207-8i, 9300-8i, etc and clones, like the Dell H200/H310 and IBM M1015, these latter ones need to be crossflashed.

@DXC i use the same controller you have. it works ok. Main benefit is that it can handle all of my 24 slots in my sc846. just make sure you have the latest firmware so it can handle drives bigger than 2 TB. See here  you have to disable the "Auto-Carving" option of the 9650SE

 

12 hours ago, cogliostro said:

@DXC i use the same controller you have. it works ok. Main benefit is that it can handle all of my 24 slots in my sc846. just make sure you have the latest firmware so it can handle drives bigger than 2 TB. See here  you have to disable the "Auto-Carving" option of the 9650SE

It's been a while since I've done anything like this, so pardon my ignorance. But as far as I can remember, the 9650SE was controlled by a web interfaced, and I had to install a software package in order to access this. So how would it work with unRaid?

you have to use the "tw_update tool"

 

first you have to download the "tw-file"  http://www.thomas-krenn.com/redx_tools/mb_download.php/mid.072079113101070048065102114068052061/Driver_3Ware9650SE-2LP-4LPML-8LPML-12ML-16ML_tw-up.zip

 

then get the latest firmware image https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/LSI/LSI-9650SE-12ML-3ware-RAID-Firmware-41000027.shtml

 

then you have to use like this.

 

./tw_update fw=/absolut_path_of_Firmware-File

 

you have to check the folder there are 2 images of firmware files i dont know it anymore what exact file you need. i think it was prom006.img if you have the 9650se the prom008.img i think was for the 9690se.

 

This whole process has to be made with ssh. i hope you have some unix / linux experiance

Edited November 3, 20187 yr by cogliostro