Not all disks recognized by BIOS (reverse breakout)


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Hi all,
My system consists of a 24 bay case with an SAS846A Backplane. 15 of the drives are connected via LSI 9300-16i and are in use. As I need to connect more drives to the MB I have ordered a reverse breakout sata to SFF8087 cable (4 sata at MB and SFF8087 at backplane).

Unfortunately the bios does not recognize any of the disks attached with that cable. The port of the backplane connected to the HBA works. Also the sata ports work with other drives. The only idea I have is a cable issue or something with the bios settings.

Any idea if i have to change settings in the bios or where the mistake could be?  The cable is the correct one right?

 

I am using the AsRock X470 Taichi Ultimate and an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. 

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11 hours ago, Benson said:

Mainboard SATA won't work with any SAS host/device.

Not quit sure if I get your point right but when the same drive is connected with a plain sata cable it works. Meaning the MB would accept the drive as such and the sata port and the drive is working. 

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The backplane was raw type have 6 minSAS port or 24 SATA port ?

 

I quick check all SC846 was SAS expander blackplane type, so I don't understand what means about 15 drive were connect to LSI HBA, in general all disks would detect under same LSI HBA.

Edited by Benson
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On 3/29/2020 at 9:05 PM, Benson said:

The backplane was raw type have 6 minSAS port or 24 SATA port ?

Sorry I have missed, that you have answered. 


My backplane is an SAS846A. The ones with an expander have an EL1 or 2 instead of the A. The "A" version has 6 SFF8087 connectors, each connecting to 4 drives. My HBA only has 4 connectors (=16 drives). The remaining 8 drives are not yet connected.

At least as a mid term solution I wanted to use the reverse breakout sata (MB) to SFF8087 (backplane) cable for four of the remaining drives.
Unfortunately they are not even recognized by the bios.

I think I was able to test everything but the cable itself without any issues. As I don't think the cable is already broken I don't know where else the problem could be.

BPN-SAS-846A.pdf

Edited by Georg
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Note, the backplane was non-expander type.

I think 2 possible reason, 1) the two 8087-SATA wasn't a reverse type. 2) Does all 6 molex power connecter have connect to PSU.

 

I would suggest you buy a reverse cable from other source and try. Or you can simple check the cable type by connect it to LSI HBA and connect a harddisk with power, if harddisk detect by HBA then that means it is a forward cable. Unfortunately, 9300-16i not use SFF8087 connector.

Edited by Benson
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6 hours ago, Benson said:

I think 2 possible reason, 1) the two 8087-SATA wasn't a reverse type. 2) Does all 6 molex power connecter have connect to PSU.

 

I would suggest you buy a reverse cable from other source and try. 

Thank you for your answer.

1) I think I should go for that on then an try another source.

2) Yes they are all connected.

Or do you have a bios setting in mind that could case it to not being recognized?

Edited by Georg
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2 hours ago, Georg said:

do you have a bios setting in mind that could case it to not being recognized?

Actually no special BIOS setting need.

Just FYR, if you connect the blackplane by MB ( SATA ), then corresponding disks LED won't work anymore.

Edited by Benson
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Have ordered another cable now. Thx for the help

5 hours ago, Benson said:

Actually no special BIOS setting need.

Just FYR, if you connect the blackplane by MB ( SATA ), then corresponding disks LED won't work anymore.

Oh, that explains the difference in some cables... Well I see that as a plus and anyway it will be until I need to connect the other disks. By then I anyway need to free up a slot or buy a bigger hba card. 

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