Hi all! I’ll try to make this as detailed as possible. I know the subject has been covered several times, but the answers don’t quite fit my arrangement. I’m running Windows 10 with a Broadcom 9560 -8i raid controller. The card is detected in bios. I haven’t been able to flash the card with any firmware (I don’t think this is the problem). Anyway, the controller doesn’t seem to recognize any drives…neither SAS nor SATA. (proplem 1). My SAS drives aren’t getting any power - problem 2 (not even with any workarounds I’ve found online). My SATA drives (drives I know are functional), do get power but still are not recognized/found by the controller in bios in order to help figure out any problems with the SAS drives (problem 3). The drives are 4x SAS with 18TB. 1x SATA drive with 14TB. All drives are freestanding with no enclosure, which is how I intend to run/operate them. I’m not really interested in any servers or hardcore NAS setups. This is all just for the sake of saving data due to continuously failing drives. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
When you say the controller doesn’t recognise the drives, is this in windows, or the controllers bios? edit: Ooofff I’m old, is no longer supported… web setup after might be the way to access the controller as per No BIOS option for 9400 9500 and 9600 series controllers
I mean the configuration menu for the card, immediately after the motherboard’s bios menu?
sometimes CTRL+R on boot to access the raid card’s bios?
Wondering if the drives need to be initialised in the controllers setup software, before they will present to the operating system later.
when you say the dries are free-standing, I’m presuming that means they are not in a HDD cage, with a backplane, so there are cables direct from the controller card, to the drives, like a miniSAShd cable, to SAS connector. and a separate connector for SATA power, regardless of whether SATA nor SAS drive is plugged in to to the cable?
looks like the software to manage the cards, can be downloaded from their website, and installed ot windows
https://docs.broadcom.com/docs/1232743946
perhaps that app will see any drives that need to be initialised or set up or whatever?
Thanks for such a speedy response! Yes, I’m old too and things weren’t like this in the movies. When I say bios, it means after accessing the MB bios and reaching the Card bios options, no drives are detected/found in order to make any use of the controller. I purchased a cheap controller previously and the drives were found in the same manner. That card was demolished by user error hehe. I don’t know anything about the Ctrl + R function but I’ll look into it. “Freestanding” is exactly as you have described it. No case, no backplane, just cables. Also, I didn’t mention earlier I’m questioning whether or not I’m using the right cables for the SAS drives? They’re supposed to be SFF-8654, but the cable don’t really fit the mini SAS slot on the controller - the with of the connector is wider on the card.
um, this sounds like the wrong cable is connected…
should it be one like this:
not like this:
I already installed that but it’s asking me for credentials I was never afforded not given any opportunity to create in any way. 
Also, this doesn’t help bios not recognizing the drive to begin with and nothing on the controller is detected in windows either.
I think I will entertain the solution with the SFF-8087 cables. My hunch was already leaning toward faulty/incorrect cables anyway. I will come back and let you know how it worked out. Thanks a bunch.
I for sure could have the wrong numbers, but check the docs. The connector should be snug.
the sales documents should have the correct name
Yeah, there are multiple options for different applications; so the correct option is seemingly questionable. The documentation I read should have been a little more detailed about the differences in cable options. My understanding is 8087 and 8654 are the same thing but I don’t think they’re identical in size…I have yet to learn all of this first hand.
worse is miniSAS (8087, narrow & flat) then SAS-HD (8643 square) then the miniSAS-x8 (8654 wider version similar to miniSAS)
the numbers get tough
I think all of the manufacturers should have left well enough alone instead of creating a one size fits all bad solution.
I think the new “slimline sas” on your board, was needed for the NVMe connection, with more lanes / pins or whatever. but yeah. it looks a bit mental
perhaps this cable might be a better solution as it is the 8i application + molex power. SlimSAS 8i (SFF-8654) Straight to 8X SATA Cable - 1 Meter
looks good, and the SFF-8482 looking end, looks to be able to connect to both SAS and SATA, with goldfingers in the bridge for a possible second sas lane, if supported
A while ago you gave me a tip about Ctrl + R. What exactly does it do?
The Ctrl+r was a bios, back on older versions of the cards. The tool you downloaded, should make it redundant…
I tried to use it and it did get me into the card bios. That bios seems to have taken over my system. After a reboot, there was a quick message about initializing a disk. Now my main drive (with all of my data) is inaccessible with cyclic redundancy errors.
It seems even DiskGenius isn’t able to read the drive…at all. Kinda defeating the whole purpose of trying to create the raid.
Ohh shit, m, not sure how one causes the other.
Was the main drive plugged in to the controller?
I would unplug the raid card and see if the drive is okay?
That’s the other strange thing…it wasn’t plugged to the controller. It was plugged to MB. Yet still as stated, the controller took over all boot sequencing somehow. I’m imagining it put itself in place as the main bios and attempted to initialize my drive through the MB’s bios.