Just spent a couple of hours dealing with this issue. I recently got a bunch of HGST SAS 4TB (HUS726040) HDDs and I wanted to test them out using my 24-bay Supermicro 846 chassis with a X9DR3-F board. This has a 846A backplane, and the HDD slots are connected like so:
slot 0-7: LSI SAS2308
slot 8-15: onboard Intel C606 Pattsburg SCU SATA/SAS controller
slot 16-23: LSI SAS2308
The drives connected to the LSI 2308 had absolutely no problems. But the drives connected to the C606 SCU would connect, but any attempt to read or write would result in I/O errors on most of the drives, but not all. I can pull SMART data off the drives connected to the C606, but I just can't actually read/write to most of them. At first, i thought i had defective HDDs, but after much swapping HDDs around and also into another identical system/chassis and re-seating cables, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. The same problematic HDDs work fine when I plug them into a slot connected to the LSI 2308. A good HDD from the LSI 2308 slot exhibits the same problems when I plugged them into the C606 slots. When I use WD Red SATA drives in the C606 slots, everything works perfectly.
So, I began some searching, and immediately found this posts:
SAS drive problem with X9DR3-F - [Solved] - Storage
and another post here at STH that seems to indicate a related problem with SAS and the C602:
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/intel-c602-606-sas-expander-support.17829/
So, it seems that there is some sort of incompatibility between HGST SAS drives and the Intel C606 Pattsburg SCU. Has anyone else seen this? If so, is there a firmware update for the HGST SAS or Intel C606 SCU that might resolve this?
Any suggestions?
slot 0-7: LSI SAS2308
slot 8-15: onboard Intel C606 Pattsburg SCU SATA/SAS controller
slot 16-23: LSI SAS2308
The drives connected to the LSI 2308 had absolutely no problems. But the drives connected to the C606 SCU would connect, but any attempt to read or write would result in I/O errors on most of the drives, but not all. I can pull SMART data off the drives connected to the C606, but I just can't actually read/write to most of them. At first, i thought i had defective HDDs, but after much swapping HDDs around and also into another identical system/chassis and re-seating cables, I couldn't figure out what was wrong. The same problematic HDDs work fine when I plug them into a slot connected to the LSI 2308. A good HDD from the LSI 2308 slot exhibits the same problems when I plugged them into the C606 slots. When I use WD Red SATA drives in the C606 slots, everything works perfectly.
So, I began some searching, and immediately found this posts:
SAS drive problem with X9DR3-F - [Solved] - Storage
and another post here at STH that seems to indicate a related problem with SAS and the C602:
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/intel-c602-606-sas-expander-support.17829/
So, it seems that there is some sort of incompatibility between HGST SAS drives and the Intel C606 Pattsburg SCU. Has anyone else seen this? If so, is there a firmware update for the HGST SAS or Intel C606 SCU that might resolve this?
Any suggestions?