I recently purchase a refurbished HGST H8 drive (HUH728080ALE604). Did a long format, ran long self test and long generic test in Seatools. All passed. Crystal disk info shows no signs of an issue.
When connected to the onboard sata ports it works fine. Tested on multiple machines. When I connect it via an LSI 9211-8i HBA it isn’t recognized at all.
The HBA is connected to hot swap bays on a Rosewill RSV-L4412U chassis. The server is running ESXI with the HBA passed through to a Windows 7 VM. No problems on this system for 5+ years and I’ve been using all 8 drives on the HBA.
I’ve tried multiple different drive bays on the chassis. None work with this drive, but they all still work with other drives. HGST 4tb, WD white label 8tb, and WD Red 8tb all work fine.
I tried the problematic drive in one of the hot swap bays that isn’t connected to the HBA and it works fine there. ESXI see’s it and can read/write to it just fine.
Any ideas? Trying to decide if I should send this drive back.
I considered that but I read that this drive does not have that issue. In addition the hot swap bays in this chassis are powered by Molex connections. My understanding is that this would eliminate that issue.
In addition the drive does work when using one of the bays that isn’t connected to the HBA but instead to the motherboard sata. Everything in the bay that works is the same as the others with the exception of it’s sata connection. So I think that rules out a 3.3V pin issue.
I do, and that’s about the only troubleshooting thing I haven’t tried yet. The server is in a rack and taking it out will mean my entire network goes down so I’m reluctant to do that.
I just can’t imagine how that would change anything given that I’ve seemingly ruled out the drive bays themselves because the drive does work in the bays without the HBA.
One troubleshooting thing I want to try is putting the HBA in a different system without ESXi and passthrough. I’m tempted just to buy another HBA and test on that so I don’t have to take down my server. Problem with that is I’m not sure if I can get that done inside my return window for this drive.
I would try the tape mod as its easy and wouldnt require any change to your systems. Unlikely like I said but if it works connected to the mobo the only difference would be power delivery since its not directly connected to the drive
I checked windows event viewer to see if there might be any clues there. I found that when I insert this drive I get 12 of the same error, “The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort1.” Source: LSI_SAS2.
This doesn’t give me much to go on but it seems to indicate that the drive insertion is being seen. For some reason the LSI HBA and the drive aren’t playing nice.
If anyone has any suggestions I’d be happy to hear it.
Thanks. Went through the video but I didn’t find anything that would apply to my scenario.
I haven’t yet tried connecting directly to the HBA as I do not want to take the server down. I ordered a second LSI 9211 today so I can test with that when it arrives. If it still doesn’t work on the new HBA I’m going to be sending it back.
I received another LSI 9211-8i HBA today. Connected it to a test machine running Win10. Multiple drives work just fine SSD, WD8tb, ect.
The problematic drive HGST H8 drive (HUH728080ALE604) is again not detected. I have it directly connected to the HBA with a breakout cable and powered by a SATA power connector.
The drive won’t even spin up. If I switch to onboard sata it works just fine using the exact same power cable.
I’ve tried three different break out cables on the HBA and both ports on the HBA. No change.
I guess this drive is going back. I’ve wasted enough time on it. I’ll have to pick up a different model this time.
