SAS drive problem with X9DR3-F

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jjgurley

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I have a server for my wife's medical office that has run fine for four years with a SuperMicro X9DR3-F m/b in SuperMicro chassis with SAS backplane. I had a Raid1 array and Raid10 array, both made with Seagate Cheetah 300GB SAS drives. My Raid10 failed, and the drives are no longer made, so I bought four Hitachi Ultrastar 600gb SAS drives.

The SCU Congig utility that comes up during boot does not recognize the new drives - it thinks the slot is empty. Slipping one of the old drives into any given slot works fine, so I don't think my failure was backplane related. Once I'm in Windows Server2008R2, the Device Manager says the drives are "working properly". Computer Management recognizes them as well, although if I try to Initialize one or all, I get "device I/O error".

SuperMicro support is responsive, but hasn't suggested anything but a Bios update (which didn't help). Hitachi is non-responsive.

Thjis is my only SAS compatible system, so I can't confirm the drives work elsewhere. Four out of four failures seems unlikely.

Is there any way for me to solve this problem by discovering the nature of the I/O error, etc? I'm pretty sure it's a backplane issue. In another week, I'll be stuck with five of these drives.
 
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smashjohn
I don't know that I can help, but I'm intrigued by your problem.

It's interesting that the Intel C606 SAS controller doesn't recognize the Ultrastar 600 drives. That combination of controller and drive is sold together (as an option) at this site: http://www.sourcecode.com/system/superserver-1027r-n3rf on a different SuperMicro MB. Can you confirm that your SAS controller is an Intel C606?

Is it possible that the hitachi drive isn't seating properly? I'm not sure if you're using hot swap drive bays or directly connecting cables. Can you feel the vibration of the drive spinning up to confirm it's powering on?

In SCU Config, the drive might show up under the Add Hot Spare option, though I can't say why this would be inconsistent with...
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smashjohn

smashjohn

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I don't know that I can help, but I'm intrigued by your problem.

It's interesting that the Intel C606 SAS controller doesn't recognize the Ultrastar 600 drives. That combination of controller and drive is sold together (as an option) at this site: http://www.sourcecode.com/system/superserver-1027r-n3rf on a different SuperMicro MB. Can you confirm that your SAS controller is an Intel C606?

Is it possible that the hitachi drive isn't seating properly? I'm not sure if you're using hot swap drive bays or directly connecting cables. Can you feel the vibration of the drive spinning up to confirm it's powering on?

In SCU Config, the drive might show up under the Add Hot Spare option, though I can't say why this would be inconsistent with how the other drives that you tested show up. Maybe because the SCU hasn't seen them before.

I'd lookup the part number of the drives if you can provide them. I don't know what I'd be looking for though. I can't imagine why that drive wouldn't be compatible.

For what it's worth, I've installed and run dozens of SAS based arrays and they've always been plug n play. Though I can't think of a time when I used SAS 3.0 drives in a SAS 2.0 system, they're supposed to be backwards compatible.
 
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jjgurley

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Sorry, but I missed your post. Dealing with Supermicro's tech support was straining, but they eventually said "they just aren't supported", for no discern-able reason. I returned the drives and bought Seagate 450gb Cheetah SAS drives, which worked immediately. SM said the drives must use 4K blocks (which they don't).

My controller responds as a Pattsburg 600/x79 series and I'm not sure which chip is actually there.
 
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