SOLVED: M1215 not detecting any drives

[roswellian]

I got a couple of M1215 from eBay recently, and decided to flash them to 9300-8i IT. Before the flashing I encountered some weird problems.

These two cards cannot detect any of my hard drives including new SSDs (samsung ans Micron) and one used spin disk (WD). I did successfully flashed one of the card into 9300-8i, and still they cannot detect any drives. These drives are consumer not enterprise ones. Any ideas what happened?

Before putting the card into the PCI slot, the mobo BIOS shows 96G memory installed as expected (16Gx6). However, the BIOS shows 64G memory once I put the card into the PCI slot. Where has my 32G memory gone? (I have found the solution on this: it is SMBus problem. It is fixed by removing the jumper on mobo to disconnect SMBus from PCI slots)


My mobo is x8DTH-6F, and onboard SAS is disabled with the jumper.
Only CPU1 installed.

Thanks.

 

[roswellian]

Desperately need help ~~~ Please, anyone?

 

[roswellian]

Memory disappearing problem fixed. Still cannot figure out why the cards didn't find any attached drives...

 

[Terry Kennedy]

These two cards cannot detect any of my hard drives including new SSDs (samsung ans Micron) and one used spin disk (WD). I did successfully flashed one of the card into 9300-8i, and still they cannot detect any drives. These drives are consumer not enterprise ones. Any ideas what happened?

I assume this card has some sort of multi-lane connectors. Are you using a breakout cable? There are 2 different, incompatible, breakout cables - "forward" and "reverse". In this situation, you need a forward breakout cable.

Of course, if your drives / cables worked with a different controller with the same connector, then we can rule out the cable as an issue.

 

[roswellian]

Hi, Terry

Thanks for the reply. I ordered the cable from eBay and here is the link.

Mini SAS SFF-8643 to 4 SATA 7pin hard 6Gbps data Server Raid Blue Cable 1m | eBay

I think it is forward but unfortunatelly I don't have other machines to verify at the moment.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Thanks for the reply. I ordered the cable from eBay and here is the link.

Mini SAS SFF-8643 to 4 SATA 7pin hard 6Gbps data Server Raid Blue Cable 1m | eBay

Hard to tell from the seller's description. Maybe use the "ask seller a question about using my item" and ask if the single-connector end is supposed to connect to a controller or to a drive backplane?

 

[roswellian]

Hard to tell from the seller's description. Maybe use the "ask seller a question about using my item" and ask if the single-connector end is supposed to connect to a controller or to a drive backplane?

I feel the same way. It is also from China, and hopefully they know the difference.

Anyway, I just ordered two forward cable from Amazon here

Amazon.com: Cable Matters Internal HD Mini SAS (SFF-8643) to 4 SATA Forward Breakout Cable 3.3 Feet / 1m: Computers & Accessories

We will see if these cables may be the magic. By the way do you think a different version of firmware will change the story?

 

[Terry Kennedy]

By the way do you think a different version of firmware will change the story?

It shouldn't - talking to drives is a pretty basic function on a host adapter and they usually get it right, even in the first firmware. The port hardware on the controller doesn't have a "swap the in and out pairs", so there's nothing to be done in firmware. That's different from Ethernet controllers, where sometimes newer firmware is needed to enable the auto-MDI-X function.

 

[roswellian]

I wonder if something special in mobo BIOS needs to be corrected after I fixed the memory disappering problem. On the other hand the hard drive detection should be strict between the card and the drives. The motherboard bios should have nothing to do that...

For now I'm runing out of all the ideas, and just hope it's some cable problem.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

I wonder if something special in mobo BIOS needs to be corrected after I fixed the memory disappering problem. On the other hand the hard drive detection should be strict between the card and the drives. The motherboard bios should have nothing to do that...

Right. Did you flash the controller BIOS? A lot of people suggest leaving it out, as it speeds up booting. My servers take enough time in other steps (memory test / general puttering about) that it doesn't save anything close to a reasonable percentage of the time spent booting.

Anyway, if you have the controller BIOS flashed, you can go into the card's setup and look at things like "Detailed PHY info" which will tell you if there's something on the other end of the cable, what link speed was negotiated, and so forth. If it says "no device", that's a pretty good sign that there is a cable issue. It is possible to have bad ports, but you generally lose a single port or maybe 2, but not all 8.

 

[roswellian]

Right. Did you flash the controller BIOS? A lot of people suggest leaving it out, as it speeds up booting. My servers take enough time in other steps (memory test / general puttering about) that it doesn't save anything close to a reasonable percentage of the time spent booting.

Anyway, if you have the controller BIOS flashed, you can go into the card's setup and look at things like "Detailed PHY info" which will tell you if there's something on the other end of the cable, what link speed was negotiated, and so forth. If it says "no device", that's a pretty good sign that there is a cable issue. It is possible to have bad ports, but you generally lose a single port or maybe 2, but not all 8.

Yes, I did flash the controller BIOS. When I pressed CTRL+C getting into the BIOS, there's one item called "SAS Topology" where normally the drives should be listed. Mine just said "no devices". At this moment I hope it is cable issuse since I have another identical unflashed card, which also cannot detect the drives either (I use the same cable)...

 

[roswellian]

Right. Did you flash the controller BIOS? A lot of people suggest leaving it out, as it speeds up booting. My servers take enough time in other steps (memory test / general puttering about) that it doesn't save anything close to a reasonable percentage of the time spent booting.

Anyway, if you have the controller BIOS flashed, you can go into the card's setup and look at things like "Detailed PHY info" which will tell you if there's something on the other end of the cable, what link speed was negotiated, and so forth. If it says "no device", that's a pretty good sign that there is a cable issue. It is possible to have bad ports, but you generally lose a single port or maybe 2, but not all 8.

Hi, Terry

Thanks for the great help! It is indeed the cable problem. The new cable from AMAZON arrived today. I plugged them in, and they worked beautifully~~ The cables I used before must be reverse ones instead of forward ones. I bought them from eBay without checking first, and this is indeed my stupid mistake. I really appreciate your help. I would like to thank @Rand__ as well. He gave me lots of useful suggestion during the debug process. Thanks!

Ros