eleazar Posted June 10, 2016 #1 Posted June 10, 2016 hey guys, I'm building a new xpenology for a family member with the UNAS NSC-800. I bought the LSI 9211-8i SAS card to run all the harddrives. I bought the ASRock N3150B-ITX motherboard (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00YH2HW7Q). I didn't realize the mobo only has a 1x PCI-E slot (the LSI card is 8x). Fortunately I have 1x --> 16x risers here. I tried a non-powered riser and a powered riser. The LSI card lights up just like the identical card in my personal xpenology build, so I know it's getting power, but when I boot it, it doesn't load the LSI card at all. It goes straight from POST to booting synology via USB drive. Does anyone else have experience with this? I'm not really sure what to do. Should I try buying a new 1x --> 16x riser? Or is there a BIOS option I should look for? Thanks for any help!
Steel275 Posted June 10, 2016 #2 Posted June 10, 2016 I had a similar problem with my card (granted, that was a Marvell 6480 card, not the same as yours). But my card turned out not to have any firmware on it at all (no joke), which is why it never "booted". After I flashed a proper firmware, it worked perfectly. Not sure if this is a possible scenario in your case, of if you just have a dodgy riser.
AllGamer Posted June 10, 2016 #3 Posted June 10, 2016 First thing you want to do, is to test the controller on another computer with a proper real PCIx16 port or a real PCIx8 port to make sure it's working
eleazar Posted June 10, 2016 Author #4 Posted June 10, 2016 Thanks guys for the suggestions. I ran home real quick and put the card in question into my current xpenology build (I'm also running the same card, so i just swapped them). The card in question detected perfectly in my personal build. So I feel pretty confident that the firmware on the card is fine, and the card itself is fine. Any other ideas that I could try?
sbv3000 Posted June 10, 2016 #5 Posted June 10, 2016 possible 'dumb' suggestions disable the onboard sata disable other 'unnecessary' peripherals - if the card is having to 'downspeed' to x1 maybe it cant 'sync' properly with other devices sharing the pci bus, irqs etc? you might be unlucky in that the lsi needs all data lines to work regardless of your x1/x16 adapter allowing the physical connection. 'plan b' could be a six drive system - two onboard and a 4 port x1 add on card
AllGamer Posted June 10, 2016 #6 Posted June 10, 2016 personally, I always think it's a dumb idea to use raiser cards, specially when you are Down-Speeding something as important as a SATA controller. There is a reason why it was designed as a PCIEx8, downgrading it to a PCIEx1 loses way too much communication links, and rather than data comm, maybe some of the POWER pins needed are in the PCIEx8 design of the card, so that is probably why it's not working. I know from experience those LSI 9211 can work on PCIEx4 mode (physical PCIEx8 / PCIEx16 slots) but going from x8 to x1 is probably too much to ask like running a marathon with only 1 leg 1
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