HP P410 SAS/SATA controller not detecting SAS drives, but detects SATA fine...

Warrior

Warrior

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So, I just upgraded our HP ProLiant DL120 G7 with a P410/512MB SAS/SATA controller and it wont detect our SAS drives (Seagate 2TB), and gives a yellow/orange light on them, but when I throw in a SATA drive (Seagate 500GB), the light turns blue and it can detect the 1 drive perfect.

I don't know what I'm missing... :(

Do I need to configure the card for SAS or something? :confused:

UPDATE: all 4 drives are dead. :(
 
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Do i need to get a new HP Mini-SAS 4x connector cable that's for SAS only? Is the cable that comes in the server not able to be used with SAS Drives?
 
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a SAS compatible cable will run a SAS or a SATA, HOWEVER a SATA breakout cable will only connect to SATA drives.

so yes, its probably your cable but with out looking into the end and seeing if it a sideband cable, i can't guarantee your issue. and too add to the confusion, sometimes SATA breakout cables will phisically fit onto a SAS disk. that would cause an issue like you are having. but there could be other issues.
 
The cable is a SFF-8087 end that has a cable for lights and 4x sata connections. That connect to the backplane on the server. HP Spare Part Number 538872-001 is the cable that came with the server.

Would the cable AND the backplane be not SAS compatible?

According to the HP documentation the backplane is SAS compatable... So i figured the cables were good too...
 
Just to make sure you are not trying to mix sata and sas on the same controller are you?
 
At first I booted it up with all 4 drives plugged in all are SAS drives, and it didn't detect any drives, then I slapped in a SATA drive and it popped up.

Also apparently this controller supports mix and matching them also.

But it flatout doesn't detect my SAS drives at all. I'm beginning to think it's the SFF-8087 cable to the drives. Why HP would put in cables that don't support SAS, but have a backpane that supports SAS, is beyond me..
 
stormy1 said:
Just to make sure you are not trying to mix sata and sas on the same controller are you?
Click to expand...

its usually only expanders, expander backplanes, or cards with built in expanders that have issues mixing.

heck i have maid RAID arrays out of mixed drives, from a raw performance perspective it is not ideal as the fast drives wait on the slow drives, but in raw size it worked fine.
 
Warrior said:
....
But it flatout doesn't detect my SAS drives at all. I'm beginning to think it's the SFF-8087 cable to the drives. Why HP would put in cables that don't support SAS, but have a backpane that supports SAS, is beyond me..
Click to expand...

cost, they saved .04$ per build and passed that expense on to the buyer. the h310 cards i usually buy are 8 drive capable but they come with a single cable that only will attach 2 drives to the header. so Dell had custom 2 port cables made to hinder the consumers ability to expand the workstation under warranty with out buying the 'Dell expander cable' at the low low price of 99$ when a compatible cable from newegg is 19$ but voids Dell warranty.
 
Were you using the onboard RAID before, the B110i? If so, that supports SATA only, so maybe the cable for that is SATA only? Seems a bit weird that would be the case, and I can't find anything in the service manual that mentions 2 different cables, but it's possible. The service manual does list 580751-001 instead of 538872-001, but as far as I can tell they're the exact same thing.

You're sure you moved the cable from the mobo port to the RAID card, right? Cause what you're describing is exactly what happens if you try to connect a SAS drive to the onboard B110i. I know it's crazy, but ask me about the time I got a 2nd SAS HBA for my external tape drive, and didn't actually move the cable over to it after I installed it. Or the time I plugged the SAS cable into the wrong port on the same external tape unit and spent an entire day debugging why it wouldn't show up. :)

Edit:
And don't forget to check firmware on the P410 to make sure it's up to date.
 
The on-board raid is the P212 controller, which only supports SATA, and is the reason we got the P410 because we have SAS drives to put in the server. And, yes, I have fully disconnected the SFF-8087 cable from the mobo and connected it to the P410 controller card, and tried both ports, and doesn't detect the drives.... Like I said, it detects SATA drives fine, So I know it's connected. I would hate to buy another cable to find more incompatibilities.

At this rate, we are thinking about just cutting our losses and just buy SATA drives. But, I REALLY want to avoid this.


I have ran the firmware update as well.
 
16-116-091-TS


do the cables and backplane you currently have, have the sideband pins? that's a bad but acceptable image. the are visible on the flip side of the connector, connectors 2 and 4 in the image.
 
Now, that I'm back at work, I'll take a look at this today, I can easily say the cables don't have this, the SFF-8087 cable has 4 ends with what looks like regular-ass SATA ends. And, the Backpane that connects to these ends have regular-ass SATA hookups. BUT, the connection where the HDDs plug into, on the other side of the backpane, these look exactly like them, like SAS style, where there is a hump in the middle.

I understand the differences of the connectors of SAS and SATA. SATA is not backwards compatible with SAS, but SAS is backwards compatible with SATA. And, with that being said this backpane seems like it has SAS HDD connections.

But, I didn't check if they have these "sideband pins"... of course, and I'll check this now.

Edit: Pics incoming.
 
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Here is an overview of the server and the backpane.
HPServer.HDD.overview.jpg



Backpane connections
HPServer.backpane.connections.jpg


Pic of the drives.
HPServer.HDD.overview.jpg

HPServer.backpane.connection.HDD%20connection.jpg

Pic of raid card
HPServer.RAIDCARD.jpg
 
Looks to me like you just need the SAS cable for the card to backplane connection.
 
Looking at HPs site... this is the parts list of my specific server.

They list the cable as PN:580751-001. And looking up that number in google, everywhere says SATA to M-SAS cable. Which i would beleive confirms that this cable doesn't support SAS.

So, the question is, what cable should I be getting?
 
I can't find any reason why this isn't working (other than the SATA2 cable being disconnected in your picture, which I'm sure was just from testing). I found a couple different parts lists for models that came from the factory with the P410, and all the cables listed are the same as the ones that came with the B110i (SATA only) or P212 (SATA and SAS).

I think you're fine with the cable, it's just called SAS->SATA, because they don't technically have SAS connectors on the 4x end. But it shouldn't matter, same number of pins for SAS and SATA data, they just get power from the separate connector, and the sideband data is handled by that 10 pin grey cable on the left in your picture. Any chance that grey cable could be plugged in backwards? I doubt it, I'm sure it's keyed.

Other than that, I'm pretty baffled. Does the onboard B110i have to be disabled or something odd like that for SAS to be properly recognized? System firmware up to date? Or maybe you're the unluckiest person in the world and all your SAS drives are actually bad? :)

Interesting that the lights go amber on the drives, cause that would lead me to believe they are still detected, just showing a fault. I would think even in that case they'd still at least show up when you hit F8 to load the RAID config at boot, super weird.

If it were me, I'd probably get myself an SFF-8087 to 4x SFF-8482 cable and just plug the drives right into the card, to at least try to narrow down where the fault could be.
Like this one: http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025412&p_id=8190&seq=1&format=2
 
That's exactly what we were thinking here. Buy this cable and at the very least check the drives.

It's almost as if we need to enable SAS drive detection or something, but I can't find any documentation that says this.

Thanks for the reassuring response.
 
they should work fine direct to the cable, but to me that looks like a sata only backplane.
HPServer.backpane.connections.jpg

see the place on the board where the sideband pins fall? its blank.
plus the cable side of the backplane has no provision for sideband at all.
your server has the CARD to support SAS but none of the connection stuff required.
 
I went ahead and ordered the cable, and if I connect a drive up and it doesn't detect it, I'm going to scrap the SAS project and just buy SATA drives. I would be shocked if all 4 of my SAS drives are dead... Hell, I'll even try the card in a different computer for shits...
 
Zedicus said:
they should work fine direct to the cable, but to me that looks like a sata only backplane. http://www.bbpix.com/files/15/HPServer.backpane.connections.jpg[MG]
see the place on the board where the sideband pins fall? its blank.
plus the cable side of the backplane has no provision for sideband at all.
your server has the CARD to support SAS but none of the connection stuff required.[/QUOTE]

According to this [URL="http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04286749"]HP Document [/URL]on the server, this is a base model server with the "HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller" (on board) and it says: "NOTE: Hot Plug SAS and SATA controllers available via PCI card option." (which is why I bought the P410) and a little below that, for the base model, it says: [B]"Up to 4 pluggable SATA/SAS 3.5" drives
supported."[/B]

This is documented that this server should have no problem supporting SAS, when it's provided a controller card that supports SAS. And that's exactly what we did. And, for some reason, doesn't work.
Click to expand...
 
WELL..... Shit.

HP.Server.Detected.Drives2.jpg



I went into the back, and dug for some SAS drives, and found some SFF drives, and plugged them in, and... shit, they are detected.

HP.Server.Detected.Drives.jpg


You can see the 2TB drives are connected too, with amber lights...

So, sweet, my RAID card works... but, WOW, ALL 4 seagates I have are ....dead?... wow... I can't wrap my head around this....

Anyways... Case closed. It was the drives this whole time. Which is mind blowing. Thanks for everyone's input.
 
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