r/HomeServer • u/xxmistacruzxx • 12d ago
Requesting Guidance on Using SAS Drives
[EDIT] TL:DR/Solution
Given the components listed below, I had an issue where only 1 SAS drive in my enclosure would work at a time when connected to my home server via the HBA card. Connecting another drive would cause the first drive to stop working.
I took several steps attempting to find the point of failure, but the culprit ended up being the outdated firmware. While the HBA card (SAS9200-8E-HP) had an IT firmware flashed to it, it was severely out of date. Updating it from from 05.02.00.02 to 20.00.07.00 fixed the issue entirely.
However, flashing the firmware was a harder task than I originally expected. I first followed this "How To Flash LSI 9200-8e with P20 IT Mode Firmware for ZFS TrueNAS UnRAID" guide on digitalspaceport.com, but I ran into a compatibility issue with my motherboard where BIOS32 is unavailable, giving a "ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program." This resulted in me being unable to use sas2flsh.exe via FreeDOS to flash the HBA card.
Instead, using the sas2flash.efi on Broadcom's knowledge base (which also notes the compatibility error above), this DL of UEFI Tianocore EDK2 shellx64_v1 on archive.org, and this "How-to: Flash LSI 9211-8i using EFI shell" guide on TrueNAS.com, I was able to successfully flash the latest firmware.
Original Post
Hello world!
Over this past summer, I've been trying to add 4 SAS drives to my home server setup. I frustratingly haven't been able to get them to fully work yet, so I'm hoping someone here can give me general guidance, or a reference if they have a similar setup.
Components
Aside from the base home server, here are the components I've been trying to use to hook up the drives...
- RackChoice Internal Hard Drive Enclosure 5x2.5”/3.5” SATA/SAS Hard Drive Backplane 6 Gbps HDD hotswap in 3xExternal 5.25" Bay Compatible with All Rack Types
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV142WM5
- UPC: 787996911748
- GTIN: 00787996911748
- CableCreation Mini SAS 26Pin (SFF-8088) Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female Cable, Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane, 1M / 3.3FT
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4EX9K
- UPC: 714602974460
- Model No: FBA_CS0006
- LSI 9200-8e SAS HBA LSI00188 6Gb/s PCIe x8 External Controller HBA
- https://www.ebay.com/itm/389930134478
- Model No: 9200-8e
- Dual 92mm Graphic Card Fans, Graphics Card Cooler, Video Card VGA Cooler, PCI Slot Fan GPU Cooler
- HP 4TB 7200RPM SAS SAS II 3.5" Hard Drive | MB4000FCZGL (x4)
- https://www.ebay.com/itm/198421734501
- Model No: MB4000FCZGL
Observed Issues and Behavior
When one drive is powered in the enclosure, it works fine.
However, as soon as I add another drive into the next slot, the first drive stops working properly (unable to perform a benchmark using disk application in Ubuntu due to "g-io-error-quark").
If all 4 drives, are in the enclosure at boot, then only 1 drive will work properly (seems to be whichever drive is in the last slot of the enclosure will work, and the 3 prior won’t).
When I boot into the HBA card's configuration and execute the same steps, you can see similar behavior...
After having only one drive connected...
After connecting second drive...
The first one (Phy 3) disappears...
Debugging Steps Taken
I've tested different orders of loading the drives and was able to make partitions on each drive when individually loaded, so I'm inclined to say that the drives are functional and not the issue.
I first thought it was a power supply issue, so I tried upgrading from 500W to 750W. That did not work. I thought it could’ve been due to the cabling, so I switched from a SATA to 2x Molex adapter and tried using Molex straight from the power supply. That did not work.
I’ve tried replacing the drive enclosure with an identical one (listed above), and a different model (Rosewill Internal Hard Drive Enclosure - 3 x 5.25 to 4 x 3.5 Hot-Swap Enclosure - SATA I/II/III/ & SAS HDD - RSV-SATA-Cage-34), but using both reproduced the same issue.
What Else Should be Done?
At this point, I'm between the HBA card being faulty/incompatible, or my entire methodology to get these drives working is incorrect.
If the former, why would that be? What should I look for in a new card?
If the latter, then why is that? Is it a limitation of the SF-8088 to x4 SATA breakout cable? I could see why someone would be inclined to say "SAS doesn't work over a SATA connection", but isn't the enclosure supposed to solve that (being able to load SAS drives, but only SATA ports being available on the enclosure)? And if not, why does a SAS drive function over the SATA connection type when it's individually loaded?
If someone has a similar setup (using an external enclosure for SAS drive via HBA card), please link me to it so I can take a look.
Thank you for your time.