LSI SAS 9300-8i - LTO-5 tape drive not being shown

[foolishlywise]

Hey guys,

Bit of an interesting situation - picked up a LSI SAS 9300-8i (SAS 3008) from eBay for a reasonable price. Seller was brilliant and posted it quick. Unfortunately, the thing doesn't seem to work with the drive. Trying everything as I don't really want to return it.

Using a SFF-8643 to SFF-8639 from HBA to drive. Drive does not show up in MSM, in Windows or when looking at adapter properties through the BIOS config tool.

Is there anything worth checking?

Drive is a HP StorageWorks 3000 LTO-5 HH.

 

[sybreeder]

Did you tried that cable before? Usually the cable might be damaged.

 

[Stephan]

IMO in such cases cable, controller port or drive is hosed, in that order of likelyhood. You need to swap components to verify. If drive and cable is known good that would leave the controller as culprit. If you don't want to take chances, send it back while weighing options and borrowing gear to test for faults.

 

[foolishlywise]

Righty. So I’ve tried a couple of cables with no luck, switching between the ports on the controller.

Drive is confirmed working OK with an old Fujitsu D2616. So I reckon it’s the controller.

Strange, I’ll test the controller with a U.2 SSD and see what comes of that. If that works, it may be an incompatibility?

 

[Stephan]

Two more things: Maybe the drive does not like your U.2 cable and rather wants SFF-8482. Also maybe your controller needs to be in IT-mode rather than IR-mode.

 

[foolishlywise]

Controller is in IT mode (confirmed on UFEI bios).

On the cable: hmmm. Cable I’m using is here: HighPoint 19 Inch 8643 to 8639 Connector

Should work according to Highpoint. Plus it’s SFF (not U.2, but they share the same connector so got used to calling it that!)

 

[nthu9280]

If you have spare SAS or SATA Drives and cables, you can test and validate the controller ports easily.

AFAIK the SAS LTO drives come with either
sff-8088 (SAS 2 ext) or sff-8482 (SAS 2 internal) connector not sff-8639

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