LSI 9240-8i install question

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MEMOFLEX

MEMOFLEX

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Hi all

I bought an LSI 9240-8i Raid card a while ago as it was off afriend and a very good price but never got around to installing it. That time is now here and I am trying to find out a little more about not only its installation but also about potential issues such as Data Loss. I am only planning on using this card in JBOD mode as have run out of sata ports on my mobo (ASUS P6X58D-E) but also because its an x58 board with the Marvell sata III controller (which uses only 1 pci-e lane and speeds are often worse than the sata II controller).

My most important concern, or question, is whether I can install the card and then just transfer my boot disk from my native sata II port to one of the LSI ports and it will work without affecting the data on the SSD? or would I need to do a clean install of my Operating system.

Also despite having quite a lot of experience with computers I have never used an add in card of any form so would it be a case of plug in to pci_e x8 slot, set bios to boot from it (if that is how it is done) and we are good to go? or are there numerous other steps that have to be taken first? I have looked around for info and found that it may need a firmware / bios update depending on what is currently on there? anything else I should know in advance? I have found drivers for my current operating system online already from the LSI site.

Finally and this is more out of curiosity but does anybody know roughly what speeds SSD's can achieve on the card in JBOD mode as most of the information I can find is based on Raid speed with 2 or more disks due to that being its main function. The SSD with the operating system on is a 240GB Corsair force 3 which at present maxes out at the sata II limit and although I know I may not notice much in terms of real world performance it would be nice to know that the card enable the SSD to at least function closer to its stated speeds.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can help or hold my hand through this ;D

Roman
 
Solution
popatim
Unfortunate thats not quite correct. The LSI only passes single disks thru as JBOD and you will need to go into the raidcard bios to configure them first. I'm not sure if the boot drive will boot with the chipset raid or ahci drivers. If it doesnt you can put the drive back on the chipset sata port and manually change the driver and then move it over the LSI.

Definitely update the LSI firmware to the latest version. Quite a few bugs have been fixed and the current ones are pretty good.

You many want to update the firmware to the -IT version. This eliminates the the raid functions of the card and simply passes the sata ports thru. You can let windows handle spanning (JBOD) whatever drives you have.

You will also probably need to...
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Dereck47

Dereck47

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If the 9240-8i is compatible with your motherboard then that's all you really should have to do.



Again, best case scenario that's all you really should have to do.




Personally, I would leave my SSD where it is, install the card, update the card's firmware to the latest version, and update the card's drivers to the latest version.

Once those two things are successfully done I would then connect my SSD to the card, set my BIOS to boot from the card, and see if it successfully boots from the card.



Since your RAID card is PCIe x8 you should get advertised Read/Write speeds from your SSD since you will be connecting your card to slot PCIEX16_2 or PCIEX16_3 on your motherboard.


If you have any problems booting from the card then you should go to LSI's website any verify if your motherboard model is on that card's motherboard compatibility list.
 
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popatim

popatim

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Unfortunate thats not quite correct. The LSI only passes single disks thru as JBOD and you will need to go into the raidcard bios to configure them first. I'm not sure if the boot drive will boot with the chipset raid or ahci drivers. If it doesnt you can put the drive back on the chipset sata port and manually change the driver and then move it over the LSI.

Definitely update the LSI firmware to the latest version. Quite a few bugs have been fixed and the current ones are pretty good.

You many want to update the firmware to the -IT version. This eliminates the the raid functions of the card and simply passes the sata ports thru. You can let windows handle spanning (JBOD) whatever drives you have.

You will also probably need to disable the Marvel or JMicron controller to get the LSI to work. Most marvel's dont play well with LSI.

As for speed, JBOD disks will give you full single drive speeds. Raid 0's will give multiples of single drive speeds. I dont know of anyone running 4 newer ssd raid0 on this but I have known a few that run 4 older ssd's and get just over 1tb/s

This card isn't all that great for running raid5's and up. 0,1, 10 are great.
 
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MEMOFLEX

MEMOFLEX

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Thanks for your response. Just a quick question regarding the -IT firmware you recommended. Where do I get that from as have seen it mentioned on other forums but seem unable to find it unless I am having a blonde moment!
 
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MEMOFLEX

MEMOFLEX

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Right well it has taken a while and a lot of head scratching but I finally got it working. I couldn't seem to get the card working with my SSD when I had the existing operating system on so I bit the bullet and reinstalled from scratch and it worked fine.

I am however experiencing an issue that I am hoping someone will know how to fix. The issue relates to after the system has POST some information is provided in relation to the Raid card with the following statement :

"All of the disks from your previous configuration are gone. If this is an unexpected message, please power off your system and check your cables to ensure all disks are present. Press any key to continue, or 'c' to load the configuration utility."

As mentioned before I am unfamiliar with setting up a card like this, so my question is there any way for this message to be by passed through a setting change or is it an issue that I am going to have to deal with? If I have to live with it then I will but as it will not progress to loading windows until I press enter, if there is a way around it then that would be great.

Cheers
 
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popatim

popatim

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If everything is working right with your raids...
When you see the press F message about a foreign configuration - Press F right away*
Then when you see the message you posted - go ahead and press the any key <grin>
You should get a message that some virtual drives were found or loaded.
If you get a message that no virtual drives were found then reboot and try again; you didnt press F quick enough.


* you may need to put your bios into a verbose mode so it displays all the text instead of a splash screen to see this message.
 
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MEMOFLEX

MEMOFLEX

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Cheers for the reply popatim.

I have worked my way through my bios options and cannot seem to get it to give me the option of 'press F for foreign configuration'. Is there a way to manually configure this from the configuration menu? Have had a peek but nothing jumped out at me.

Again any assistance would be appreciated.

Cheers
 
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