LSI SAS3444E not being detected on a modern system

[diminddl]

Hello, I run a small NAS with an ASRock J3355B-ITX and 4 SATA drives. I have used a consumer PCI-E to SATA card for a while, but recently one of it’s ports became flaky, so I decided to update to a proper HBA.

I bought an LSI Logic sas3444e and finally got around to using it in my server. I plugged in all the drives, booted into my debian install, ran lsblk, and nothing. So, I do lspci, no mention of the card. I enabled all CSM options, still nothing, not even the PCI option rom screen shows up. I even decided to boot into uefi shell and list all devices though pci and it’s still not there. The card itself has it’s LEDs on and one of the LEDs on the back side blinking slowly.

I googled a bit and found that these cards don’t seem to play with UEFI very well, so I am currently arranging a legacy bios computer to plug it in and see. I also apparently need to flash it into IT mode to just use it as a PCI-E to SATA bridge. Which I have trouble finding online, as “sas3444e IT firmware” doesn’t return anything of use, just people mentioning they did it, but not files or instructions… I found stuff for the “SAS9217” so I assume the process would be similar, but any links for my card that I did find are dead. And there is also no guarantee that it will work in my UEFI system after flashing.

So, I am looking for some advice on what to do, should I just cut my losses and buy something different? Or is there hope that if I flash this card correctly in the older system that it would work fine as a simple sata bridge. And maybe someone has some pointers on where and which firmware I should obtain and what the correct flashing process for this particular card is.
Thank you.

[diizzy]

SAS3444E is also known as SAS1068E, you’ve bought a controller that was released roughly 15 years ago. It also has troubles (conflicting information) handling larger drives than 2TB so it’s more or less e-waste unfortunately.

According to https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J3355B-ITX/index.asp your 16x slot operates in 2x mode which may also cause issues as LSI/Avago/Broadcom HBAs usually are 8x or more. In theory this shouldn’t be an issue but it’s not an supported setup. I think your best bet is probably getting a ASMedia ASM1164/1166 card and hope for the best, there have been some incompatibility reports with newer hardware however my Silverstone(tek) ECS06 have been working fine in both a RockPro64 and my old Z77-based box (with the firmware fix applied).

[diminddl]

Well I have successfully flashed it to IT mode, and it works in the BIOS system I used to do so, and the drive I plugged into it is even detected in lubuntu 18.04 on that machine. However, back in the ASRock J3355B-ITX it is not detected. I can see the Option ROM starting up but not presenting me with the option to actually enter it like it was on the BIOS system. So I guess it is the lack of PCI-E lanes that is causing this. I will try putting it in my desktop with a full x16 slot and seeing what happens later, to answer if it’s a UEFI vs PCI-E at this point.

Also I found out that you can use >2TB drives in IT more apparently, but that isn’t really a problem for me currently since my drives don’t exceed that.