Hard drives don't show up?

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rst6616

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This is my first attempt trying to setup a test Storage System.

My newly purchased hardware is:

Supermicro X8DT3-F motherboard
12 gig of memory
1 existing sata harddrive 80gig for boot drive
4 temporary existing sata harddirves 320gigs each for the data drives (to be replaced in the near future with five or more 2-TB sata drives)
O/S Windows Server 2008 R2

I am trying to test the above system with a small number of test data hard drives in IT (JBOD) mode. I am pretty sure that the motherboard has been jumpered in the default IT mode.

In the near future, when I receive five or more new 2TB hard drives, I will hopefully have learned how to set these up.

I have attached the 80gig boot drive on to one of the standard built in sata ports on the motherboard.

I have attached the four 320gig data drives on to one of the two SAS built in ports using a SAS to 4 sata drive breakout cable.

I have installed Windows 2008 R2 server O/S.

My problem is that the four data drives connected to the SAS controller do not show up in the Device Manager. If it is helpful info, a "LSI Embedded MegaRAID" driver does show up under Device Manger -> Storage controllers.

How does one go about setting up a string of data hard drives as JBOD's when connected to the SAS controller?
 
First thing are sure you're not using a reverse break out cable? If you're using the proper cable does the drives show up when the LSI post and/or in it's BIOS? Since you're not seeing a LSI MegRAID controller in device manager (I assume you also don't have an unconfigured RAID controller) that you don't have the LSI controller enabled in the BIOS. As for setting up the drives as JBODs, any of my RAID controllers that support JBODs they automatically get set that way until you configure them as something else, I have used LSI 1068 based controllers(as you onboard LSI is) but they did't support JBOD so if I wanted to run individual drives I'd have to set up them up as single drive RAID 0s.
 
Grateful for your reply. My real problem is that I have never setup a raid set before & I am a complete novice!
a)The cable (Norco C-SFF8087-4S) is labeled Reverse Breakout Cable.
b) The post at boot says: LSI MegaRAID Software RAID BIOS Version M1068e.08.09041155R
LSI MPT RAID Found at PCI Bus No:03 Dev No.00
Bringing up the Controller. Please wait...
c)As stated initially, the LSI Embedded MegaRAID driver does show up in Device Manager
d) My understanding is that the motherboard controller 1068e does support JBOD as default???
 
First you need to order a new cable, reverse breakout cable goes from SATA to SF-8087 so it's not going to work w/ your set up. Since I haven't even looked at your MB manual I can't say for sure but you might not need to do anything else once you have the proper cable.
 
Thanks, that is a big help.
The complete label on the cable says:
Norco C-SFF8087-4S to 4X SAS/SATA
Reverse Breakout Cable

The Supermicro X8DT3-F motherboard has two built in SAS connectors that support 8 SAS or SATA drives. I guess this means that I need a the similar breakout cable that is not "Reverse".
 
Yeah, you'd normally use that cable to connect you MB's SATA ports to SFF-8087 connect on a hot swap backplane. A cable labeled as just fan/break out or forward fan/break out should be what your looking for, a lot of the time they also state which end goes to the host.
 
I did a google search for SFF-8087 4x forward breakout cable. It returns all sorts of SAS cables like "Forward Ipass Mini SAS to 4 SAS/SATA Cable" or "Sata Internal Breakout Cables w/ SFF-8087" or "Multi Lane Internal SFF-8087 to 4x Serial ATA breakout cable" etc etc. Terms used are varied-like ipass, Mini SAS vs SAS, Multi Lane etc. And here in my home city of 5 million people, nobody I can find knows the difference or even stocks these many different kinds. The only place I can even find these listed are the big online retailers like NewEgg or Amazon etc.

Are any rate, hopefully I am one my way to my first serious storage computer. Thanks to you.
 
SAS isn't really mainstream consumer status, so brick and mortar places won't have it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097&cm_re=8087-_-16-116-097-_-Product is the most basic form of what you need.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103191&cm_re=8087_sas-_-16-103-191-_-Product would also work, but its designed for SAS. It is backwards compatible with SATA, and it combines data and power into a single connector (still need power from PSU through). This is not needed unless you plan on using SAS drives.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033&cm_re=8087-_-16-133-033-_-Product is what you have currently, and does not work on controllers with 8087 connectors.

IT mode firmware won't have a BIOS screen or list drives usually, so even when everything is connected properly you won't see them until you get into windows. In the raid mode it will have it's bios and allow you to create drives before it boots, and it sounds like yours is in IT mode, just have to get the proper cable.
 
adi: This info is very helpful to me and perhaps other new home storage users. Many thanks for your time taken to explain.

As far as I know, this motherboard default's to IT mode. Once I obtain this cable, will I be able to see these drives in Windows Server-Device Manager? Is this where I setup the raid set so that all drives act as one?
 
IT mode is the non-raid/JBOD mode. The disks will show up as individual drives inside of the OS. In order to make a raid array pre-windows you need to either flash to the SR firmware or, if you motherboard has it, change the jumper from IT to SR.

If you plan on doing Windows software raid, IT mode is what you want, and then you use the disk management snap-in to create your array from within windows.

With the SR firmware, when your computer boots you will get the LSI MegaRAID bios, which will have the option to configure/create raid arrays. You will also have to make sure that the drivers load for this in Windows too.
 
Thanks for the explanation re Windows IT and SR modes. I am not entirely sure, but I believe that SR must mean "Sata Raid" and if used, would mean using hardware for the Raid sets. I guess I am lucky to have a motherboard with both IT/SR modes available so that I can see which one might have better performance. Again your explanations on what to use to configure the various modes was extremely helpful to me.

Right now I am only setting this system up as a test system and seeing how Windows might perform, especially the local lan throughput between the server and my Window's workstations. In the near future I plan on setting up a new test bed with one of the ZFS systems (ZFSguru seems really ideal). This probably is the system of choice when speed and data safety is considered together.

P.S. I have just ordered the proper replacement SAS to 4x forward cables (thanks to you pointing me in the right direction) and 5 new Hitachi 2tb 5k3000 drives to be used for my data.
 
The fun part is that SR stands for software RAID. In reality in that mode it is a hardware RAID controller with lots of work done in software, whereas IT mode is JBOD and all software for RAID options.

With modern drives and Windows 7 based OS, you should be able to hit 80-100MB/s between machines on large sequential file transfers.

Like you pointed out, you can used SR mode for Windows and play with RAID 0/1/10, and then set it to IT mode for playing with ZFS.

Good luck with the new parts.
 
Wow, reaching 80-100MB/s would be fantastic.
Hopefully I am now on the right track with IT/SR modes and Raid setups.
thanks again to adi & lovemyram4x4
 
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