IBM Server RAID M1015 questions

[ocso]

Hi,

I have couple of questions:

My card is IBM M1015 and I flashed with the latest official LSI 9211-8i IR firmware (17.00.01.00).
My current RAID configuration is the following:
- 1. DRIVE Group
- 1. VIRTUAL DRIVE (RAID1) 2x3TB HDDs
- 2. DRIVE Group
- 1. VIRTUAL DRIVE (RAID1) 2x2TB HDDs

1.) I connected 2x2TB additional HDDs and I would like to add another RAID0 array but MSM does not allow it (according to the specification it support 2 volumes).
Can I delete the 2nd drive group and create a new with 4x2TB HDDs and create 2 independent 2 RAID0 array within the drive group?

2.) If the above is not possible and I flash the card with the official LSI 9240-8i firmware,
can I do the above configuration or can I add more than 2 drive groups?

3.) I would like save the current RAID array configuration from the LSI 9211-8i between firmware flash, is it possible with some tool or in MSM?
I mean the following process:
- save RAID config - flash 9240-8i firmware
- flash 9211-8i firmware back
- load RAID configuration

Thank you in advance!

 

[sybreeder]

To plain Raid why you want to switch to 9211 rom in the first place ? It would be useful if you'd like to test raid 1E. Other than that stock rom works fine as i tested.
I'm not sure if your raid from 9211 will work when you do reflash to 9240/m1015.

 

[ocso]

When I received my card I have tested it with the official IBM firmware in different motherboards: ASUS P8Z77-V LE and Asrock Z68M-ITX under Win7x64. All recognized but could not start the card under Windows, then I flashed with LSI 9211-8i firmware and it works just fine now.
Now I have the card in ASUS P8Z77-M PRO MOBO with Windows 2012 and I wanted to try with the official LSI 9240-8i firmware because according to the specs the 9211 rom supports max. 2 volumes but 9240 up to 16.
Regarding RAID1E: I would not like to use non-standard RAID levels
To save configuration: this is just for testing, I would like to avoid reinitializing existing arrays (takes 16 hours)