Adaptec ASR-6805 SAS RAID Card

[dannypot]

Hi,

I can't seem to find much help on these models but am wondering about a few things:
1) Will they support SATA drives using the relevant cables?
2) Are they limited to certain machines only or should they work fine in any motherboard with an available PCI-E slot?
3) Do they require any specific settings in BIOS to work with UEFI, TPM and Secure boot?
4) What could cause one to prevent my computer from completing POST tests and make it freeze before it has even fully loaded the BIOS (can't even access BIOS with it in the board)?
And finally 5) Would my motherboard's onboard RAID conflict with the card and cause issues or should that not matter?

System Specs:
MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon
Ryzen 5 3600
16GB DDR4 2400
Various drives - total over 12 at present (8 RAID, the rest for standard system use using the onboard AMD RAID system - excluding boot drive)
Adaptec card has battery backup and cache module as well

I tried both the CPU direct slot and the chipset slot

I tried manually settings the slot(s) to PCI-e2 in BIOS

I tried clearing CMOS and fully powering down (mains cable out and hold power button for 30 secs) - this resulted in seeing half of the RAID card startup text but it still freezing up (with that text on screen).

The seller believes the card is faulty and has dispatched a replacement but I wanted to check somewhere before I install this one.

Any suggestions or theories welcome on this one.

Thanks in advance everyone!

 

[i386]

1) yes
2) the stock/vanilla versions no, oem models maybe
3) not sure as these cards (sas2) came around a similar time as the (u)efi stuff
4) "stupid" consumer stuff, check for a bios update (I had a problem with a mellanox nic in an asus system that was solved with a newer bios version)
5) In theory no, in practice maybe

I would try to limit the number of bootable devices and see if that solves the problem.

 

[Chriggel]

It's not unheard of that especially consumer mainboards have problems with option ROMs. I feel this became gradually somewhat better over time, but it got worse again when UEFI took off, so you were in a bad spot between legacy BIOS and UEFI mainboards and option ROMs, topped with a good measure of CSM.

Assuming the card isn't faulty, I think there's a chance that your problem lies somewhere in the area of 3). I guess your mainboard runs in UEFI mode with CSM off? It could also be that it has nothing to do with UEFI and CSM and that this mainboard is just bad at handling additional option ROMs. Workstation and server mainboard are often built with executing many option ROMs in mind, consumer mainboard sometimes not so much. Also, the manufacturer could just have screwed up the implementation.

Check your mainboard settings for executing option ROMs, especially legacy option ROMs. Disabling the executing of option ROMs for the PCIe slot the controller is supposed to go in could solve the issue.

The above would be preferrable, but if you can't do that or it doesn't work, there's another option. Try turning CSM on if it's off. However, this could mess up other things for you, like booting your existing OS installation and your other RAID setup, so you might want to be careful with that. But if this is the problem, temporarily turning it on could allow you to access the controller and turn off its option ROM (on the controller level instead of the mainboard level like mentioned above), if it has such an option. Some controllers have the configurable option to load their option ROM.

The option ROM is really only needed if you want to boom from it. If either works, you could then also check for a firmware update for the controller, maybe it's old and proper UEFI support was added in a later version of the firmware.

 

[dannypot]

So, I got it working (to a point). It works with secure boot off but not if i have it on standard boot keys. If I set to "maximum security" in secure boot, the card allows the system to pass post and gets to activating system drivers where it falls over with "critical_process_died" BSOD and won't boot a bootable windows usb either so I can't trigger a windows install (reset fails in this situation, before you can even choose where it is resetting from - local or cloud). I've gone back to what works but am quite security conscious so I will look into a more recent card that can support these features and has at least 2 SAS ports on it. I can migrate my data where needed

 

[dannypot]

Another update:
Managed to persuade a reinstall out of it by re-creating the USB on another PC.
Finally, it starts up at a "normal" pace (instead of waiting for RAID to detect drives and boot a boot kernel I don't need) and boots!
After installing nothing but base system drivers and windows updates, it all appears OK. However, in this mode, the card is not found in BIOS setup screens like it is without secure boot turned on and once the card drivers are installed, I either get a code 10 or PC won't start after the drivers get installed
Tried many things, none worked. So I went back to tried and tested - secure boot off until I can find a card that is secure boot compatible

 

[dannypot]

Does anyone know of any relatively cheap SAS controllers that have full UEFI and Secure Boot support, will support 8 drives via SAS to SATA cables, and will allow me to have it set to passive mode (where I don't need boot support from the RAID, just the ability for windows to use the card and drives - including a driver for WinRE and Windows Setup so that I don't have to reinstall windows when things go wrong, I can recover from a system image backup i store on the RAID.

Thanks in advance everyone!

In the meantime, the Adaptec 6805 vanilla won't support secure boot in any way. To use one with Windows 11, it requires a Windows 10 driver from microsemi, the config utility (separate download and takes mucking about with windows firewall and IE mode in edge to get it working), and it won't boot insecure boot standard mode is turned on and fails to load the device driver (code 10 in dev manager) when you enable the maximum security secure boot mode. Turn secure boot off and it starts as you'd expect. I've tried firmware update for both BIOS and SAS, didn't help with either.
I have also noticed that it clearly doesn't fully support UEFI as my VGA light is on permanently with the card in but system still runs. All runs perfectly, just an "oddity" in my book. Suspect that the SAS BIOS doesn't have a full UEFI support in there so some boards get confused as to what they are perhaps (just guessing)?

 

[nabsltd]

Does anyone know of any relatively cheap SAS controllers that have full UEFI and Secure Boot support, will support 8 drives via SAS to SATA cables, and will allow me to have it set to passive mode (where I don't need boot support from the RAID, just the ability for windows to use the card and drives - including a driver for WinRE and Windows Setup so that I don't have to reinstall windows when things go wrong, I can recover from a system image backup i store on the RAID.

I'm pretty sure the LSI 9361-8i will do what you want, and can be bought for $40. I recommend that seller, as all the LSI RAID cards they sell have every feature (RAID6, CacheCade, etc.) unlocked.

I use Windows 10 and boot off NVMe and use the drives connected to the LSI for general storage (including storing the system image backup). I can't imagine Windows 11 wouldn't be exactly the same. I'll probably upgrade to Windows 11 over the summer, if you want to wait to see if it works for sure.

 

[dannypot]

I'm pretty sure the LSI 9361-8i will do what you want, and can be bought for $40. I recommend that seller, as all the LSI RAID cards they sell have every feature (RAID6, CacheCade, etc.) unlocked.

I use Windows 10 and boot off NVMe and use the drives connected to the LSI for general storage (including storing the system image backup). I can't imagine Windows 11 wouldn't be exactly the same. I'll probably upgrade to Windows 11 over the summer, if you want to wait to see if it works for sure.

Thanks matey. I'll look into it. The main concern that that secure boot buggers POST with the Adaptec one in so I am wary of others. Is secure boot turned on in your system? TPM as well? I'm already on 11 so both are required to be supported/enabled. At the moment I'm running TPM2.0 but secure boot is turned off. Hence wanting a card that will boot on secure boot mode. It'd also be nice if it could do drive detections faster but I know they're designed for servers so slow startup is pretty much moot point with these kinds of things
As long as I can get the security up to scratch and it starts up, I am not too bothered about an extra 30 secs waiting for SAS RAID detection that hides behind the pretty MSI screen i stare at for a while when I first power on (I tend to go for a smoke outside after hitting the power button lol)

Thanks again though, I'll look into it

 

[nabsltd]

Is secure boot turned on in your system? TPM as well?

Yes. TPM2.0.

 

[dannypot]

Fair enough. I can run the TPM2.0 but secure boot stops RAID card running and freezes the whole system. It works as-is so I'll consider a more recent card in the future if secure boot being off becomes an issue for updates or anything