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TenOC's avatar
TenOC
Nomad
Jan 29, 2015

Setting up a RAID 0 LSI SER523 Rev B2 4 Port.

I have a "new to me" Dell T7500 workstation. Win7-64 4TB, 3Tb, 2Tb and 250Gb HD. The OS is on the 250Gb "C" drive. The other drives are only for data.

1 Should I plug the data large hard drives into the motherboard label HDD or SATA? I plug the 4Tb into the HDD-2 socket. The on board pre-boot shows the drive as only 2+ Gb. After booting up, the 4Tb drives appears to work OK. However,today (due to a power outage during boot ?) windows did a check disk and identify all(?) the files as "orphan". Now ALL my files are "read only". . . :M . . I do not want this to happen again because my data is important.

2. I do have a LSI Logic SER523 REV B2 4 PORT PCI-X card that I am think about using as a RAID 0, The LSI manual is too complicated for me. . . . :h , , , Is there a short "layman's" how to or video some place? I did a Google search without any luck

Thanks

17 Replies

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  • LittleBill's avatar
    LittleBill
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    it doesn't matter where you plug it in, the controller is limited to 2 TB, thus you need to buy a new controller..... to see the 4 TB,

    this will still not fix you data redundancy issues. i think its time for you to visit the Geek Squad
  • TenOC's avatar
    TenOC
    Nomad
    Jan 30, 2015
    GordonThree wrote:
    TenOC wrote:
    GordonThree wrote:

    I dug up your service manual... looks like the system has both an SATA controller, ports SATA0-3 and an SAS (serial attached scsi) contrller, ports HDD0-3


    So which connection is "best" SATA 0-3 or HDD 0-3 for my large drive ??? . . . :h


    SATA would be my bet, you'd know it if you bought a 4TB SAS drive, they are considerably more expensive and harder to source


    SATA. I think the manual reads to plug the boot disk into HDD-0 and that the HDD 1-3 will accept SATA as well as SAS drives.
  • GordonThree's avatar
    GordonThree
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    TenOC wrote:
    GordonThree wrote:

    I dug up your service manual... looks like the system has both an SATA controller, ports SATA0-3 and an SAS (serial attached scsi) contrller, ports HDD0-3


    So which connection is "best" SATA 0-3 or HDD 0-3 for my large drive ??? . . . :h


    SATA would be my bet, you'd know it if you bought a 4TB SAS drive, they are considerably more expensive and harder to source
  • bwanshoom's avatar
    bwanshoom
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    TenOC wrote:
    GordonThree wrote:

    I dug up your service manual... looks like the system has both an SATA controller, ports SATA0-3 and an SAS (serial attached scsi) contrller, ports HDD0-3


    So which connection is "best" SATA 0-3 or HDD 0-3 for my large drive ??? . . . :h
    What type of hard drive is it? That's going to determine how to connect it. It's going to one or the other.
  • TenOC's avatar
    TenOC
    Nomad
    Jan 30, 2015
    GordonThree wrote:

    I dug up your service manual... looks like the system has both an SATA controller, ports SATA0-3 and an SAS (serial attached scsi) contrller, ports HDD0-3


    So which connection is "best" SATA 0-3 or HDD 0-3 for my large drive ??? . . . :h
  • GordonThree's avatar
    GordonThree
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    Spec sheet from Dell for that system claims 2TB per drive, 5 drives, 10TB max... so your big drives will likely not work correctly, unless you connect them to a separate new controller that specifically supports large drives.

    datasheet

    I dug up your service manual... looks like the system has both an SATA controller, ports SATA0-3 and an SAS (serial attached scsi) contrller, ports HDD0-3

    The information in the service manual conflicts with the datasheet, I'm guessing there's more than one generation of the T7500 out there.

    service manual
  • bwanshoom's avatar
    bwanshoom
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    TenOC wrote:
    BIOS is up to date. I now know what I want is a JBOD (Just a Brunch Of Drives)

    Does it mater where I plug into the motherbord???? . . :h . . HDD or SATA?
    You said originally you had an issue with your data and that you don't want it to happen again because your data is important, you bring up RAID and now you say you just want to connect a bunch of drives with no concern for data integrity? I'm not sure I follow your thinking here.
  • HTElectrical's avatar
    HTElectrical
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    If the drive is a SATA drive plug it into a SATA port. You may have different ports that use a different controller. Look in your manual, and see what ports go to what controller, and then enable that controller in the Bios. You can also change whether it is AHCI, SATA, PATA, etc... more than likely, so read your manual, and if you don't understand something Google the setting, and find out what it means.
  • TenOC's avatar
    TenOC
    Nomad
    Jan 30, 2015
    GordonThree wrote:


    Dell might have a bios update for your workstation, that enables large disk / 4k support. check http://support.dell.com - plug in your service tag number


    BIOS is up to date. I now know what I want is a JBOD (Just a Brunch Of Drives)

    Does it mater where I plug into the motherbord???? . . :h . . HDD or SATA?
  • GordonThree's avatar
    GordonThree
    Explorer
    Jan 30, 2015
    that "raid" card is a fakeraid card, no benefit to using it, since all the functions are (driver) software based.

    it's also only SATA-150, most likely will support drives UP TO 2 tb and nothing more.

    Dell might have a bios update for your workstation, that enables large disk / 4k support. check http://support.dell.com - plug in your service tag number

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