So, I've got this HP Smart Array E200 Controller from a scavenged server and thought that is would work pretty well in my desktop since I have two and only need one for my server. It has nice bandwidth between drives and gives me 8 more SATA ports through SAS. The problem is that I have no clue how to initialize the thing on a desktop motherboard. I am running an Asus Gene VII. I was hopping I could just plug it in and BAM more storage!
http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?swItemId=MTX_225f3d281fea4ca2bf3528932f
Lists the operating system support and Win7 is not supported of course. Do I need drivers? I feel like there is a different issue of the card not being recognized as a bootable drive. I know I configured it when I ran it in a server.
Does it show up in device manager? I'm pretty sure you're going to need drivers. You should be able to use the windows server drivers, 2008 r2 is close enough to windows 7 that it should work.
I never used drivers when running linux. That's why I wasn't sure. I am honestly not as familiar with Windows. I do not immediately see it in device manager. It may be showing up as unknown as I do have two of those. I'm not sure what they may be. The driver states that the device is not found or the firmware/software does not apply. So it is not seeing the card at all.
The card does have power as led are on. The SAS to SATA cable that I have plugged in has a USBish header on it. The middle top pin is keyed though. Not usb clearly, but I am not sure what it is and if that would matter. Seeing as the card itself isn't recognized to install drivers I don't think so. I tried the E200/64 and /128 server 2008 r2 drivers.
if you can figure out which of the unknown devices it is you might be able to install the driver manually
So these are the locations of the two:
PCI bus 0, device 20, function 0
on Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
So, the first one I would think. So Windows won't even recognize a device without drivers? I wish I didn't want to game. equo install **** is a much nicer way to do things and have all dependences sorted right away. Ill have to see about how to manually install a driver. They give me a single exe file. So, from the device menu, I update the driver? Choose the exe? It seems like it wants a folder with the driver files inside.
So, my BIOS should recognize the device right? It doesn't show up at all leaving me to believe that this controller isn't that unknown device. I can say that the card always initialized before the motherboard BIOS gave you the option to go to it. It would come up with a screen that said it was initializing with a spinning slash. Is that possibly the issue? Is there a way to get it to initialize first? I had Debian on one of the raid volumes to boot from so it should recognize the drives fine if the card is functioning.
I can't find anything online to help. Hp requires a payment to even let me ask a damn question. What is that shit?
Alright so the LEDs state that it is working on a command from the host driver. That's all I got.
More findings. I used HWiNFO to find that the PCIe slot that it is plugged into is being recognized as empty though power is going to it. So yea. I'm at a loss. I think it simply may not be compatible with a non hp server board.