I just acquired a Broadcom 9400-16i HBA for my home server that is supposed to replace an older LSI controller. My previous configuration consisted of a mix of different brands and types of drives (Crucial BX500 and MX500, Intel 545s, Samsung 860 EVO), which worked just fine. Unfortunately with this new HBA, while the BX500 and 860 EVO operate as expected, I am unable to even see the MX500 and 545s SSDs.
I did some testing to isolate the issue. The drives themselves are fine; with/without expander does not make any difference; and a firmware update did not affect this situation. I happen to have a Broadcom 9440-8i available as well, and when I tried that one, to my surprise all drives were detected and usable.
Now, I noticed that StorCLI reports the following for the 9400-16i:
Whereas for the 9440-8i it reports:
For the drives that do work (including the low-end BX500 drives, interestingly), StorCLI reports 'Certified = Yes', so I wonder whether my HBA indeed rejects certain drives based on them being 'un-certified'? And if so, is there any way to change this "default" behavior?
I did some testing to isolate the issue. The drives themselves are fine; with/without expander does not make any difference; and a firmware update did not affect this situation. I happen to have a Broadcom 9440-8i available as well, and when I tried that one, to my surprise all drives were detected and usable.
Now, I noticed that StorCLI reports the following for the 9400-16i:
Code:
Defaults :
========
(...)
Un-Certified Hard Disk Drives = Block
(...)
Code:
Defaults :
========
(...)
Un-Certified Hard Disk Drives = Allow
(...)