Are you able to connect an SSD to your unit of the Adaptec 1200P that has support for an SSD manufacturer firmware update or status tool?
We know from @twin_savage that at least CrystalDiskInfo can access the SSD’s controller which is unthinkable with Broadcom Tri-Mode HBAs.
But that renaming of the connected SSDs (“NVMe” as a prefix and “SCSI Disk Device” a suffix) rubs me the wrong way, like seriously man!
I’m having issues with DigiKey since they want me to send them copies of personal IDs which is a big No-No for me and I’m wondering how that can be GDPR-compliant.
I’m seeing contradictory information depending on what utility I run to look at the NVMe drive’s connection type under Windows, however keep in mine I’m using that sketchy M.2 adapter which could be adding to some of the weirdness here:
I’m sorry but it seems like a big fat RIP on low-level access to the drive through the 1200p, at least on Windows. (Unless the software doesn’t support the 7500 series, but I really doubt that.) Surprising that hdsentinel isn’t able to wring out much useful data from the drives either, only some very basic stuff such as temperature and power-on time. It does identify them as NVMe however, not SCSI.
A little off-topic, but could someone bless me with the 1.0 firmware for the Broadcom p2411w? (Is it even possible to downgrade those things?) Otherwise I have an expensive paperweight on my hands…
If you don’t have a fancy active electronic UBM backplane you have use the firmware from Broadcom’s website up to including the package listed as P14.2. Successfully up and downgrading firmwares hasn’t been a problem for me.
Any firmware newer than from the package P14.2 will result in the P411W-32P not detecting anything directly attached to it without such an UBM backplane as a go-between because Broadcom actively removed the feature of being able to use directly attached SSDs (which is a retarded move since this HBA ONLY works with PCIe NVMe SSDs, but that’s Broadcom for you).
The two units of the P411W-32P I have had in my grabby little fingers came with an ancient (pre-release?) firmware that identified itself with the version 0.1.0.0. That old-AF version isn’t anywhere publicly available to download as far as I know.
Ah alright, I understand. I misunderstood the earlier parts of the thread, I thought you needed that 0.1.0.0 for direct attach disk compatibility. I’ll just get the 14.2 then, thank you very much!
WRT the Adaptec cards:
So I tried to set one of the NVMe drives as Secondary “Boot Type” thinking it might expose the drive in a different way and I basically gave myself a heart attack.
The system would lock up after a couple minutes of use (be it in BIOS, OS, UEFI shell) after I had done this or fail to boot completely. I pulled the raid card out and the behavior persisted, I pulled out all the NVMe drives and the behavior didn’t change.
Eventually I just pulled the battery out of the motherboard and let it sit several hours and that seemed to cure it. I’m not sure what happened, perhaps some kind of buggy UEFI entry happened, but I don’t wish to repeat it.
While randomly looking through AliExpress listings I got recommended this thing: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005842274516.html
Assuming it actually uses the advertised ASM2824 switch it should actually be Gen3 and not Gen4 and x8, not x16. The listed throughput is 64Gb/s which matches Gen3x8. According to ASMeda product brief (why share the datasheet with the pleb, huh?) the switch should support hot plug and up to 12 downstream ports.
Does anyone have any experience with this controller? Since it’s a switch it ticks most of the boxes, but then again it’s just Gen3x8 total. I’d also be interested in knowing how it handles H10s/H20s .
Looks to be mostly the same, but with a fan on the switch and a heatsink on the SSDs.
There’s no external power plug on either card, which is interesting as an M.2 drive can pull close to 20 watts these days, and I’m sure the switch is fairly costly as well. Aren’t x8 slots limited to 25 watts? But even if it gets the 75W allotted to an x16 slot, that might not be enough. Depends on what you plug in it I guess.
Interstingly, I can’t find anything about power draw of “current era” M.2s. I know H10s pull ~5W max, 970 PRO similarly 5.2W-5.7W depending on the model - those are Gen 3 drives so more relevant for the card.
990 PRO (Gen4) lists 5.4W/5.8W active so not much change here.
You can always mod more power delivery if it turns out to actually be a problem
The maximum I’ve ever seen with M.2 PCIe SSDs is about 10 W which is edging the PCIe spec for the 3.3 V slot power delivery. Even M.2 SSDs with powerloss protection like the Micron M.2 7450 models max out at little over 8 W.
And these guys get so hot that you absolutely have to use a heatsink or blast them with a 120 mm fan at close range at max RPM to keep them in check.
(I have recently built with these SSDs since M.2 NVMe + Powerloss Protection was a requirement and was surprised how “wow, actually darn hot” 8 W can get on a 22 mm x 110 mm PCB. Note: If you want to test your SSDs’ cooling solution hit them with continued random writes)
I’m probably wrong. I have this 17W number in my head for the Sabrent Rockets, but I can’t for the life of me find anything online to back it up.
On the other hand, Asus’ Hyper Gen5 M.2 carrier for 4 drives has a 6-pin PCIe power connector so they were clearly expecting to go outside 75 watts with it; and that’s just a dumb bifurcation-based adapter with no electronics. But that’s not proof of anything of course.
I see others here have the Adaptec 1200p controller so am looking for some help. I have the 32i variant with four u.3 tri-mode cables (ACK-I-SlimSASx8-8SFF-8639x1-U.3-0.8M):
Putting the controller into Direct Attached with 2 devices mode and the generic DiliVing cable works, but only sees one drive. What am I missing here?? Its got to be something stupid.
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