Leaderboard

Well, I'd still recommend those cards. Between one of them and the motherboard, that should get you 10-12 ports that you can use. And while I know that you don't want to dump a bunch of money into it.... keep in mind that if you get a cheap consumer card .... you may end up doing so anyways, as they may have issues and you may end up getting something like this ANYWAYS. As for SAS Expanders ... wow, they've dropped in price: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0042NLUVE/

Ok I've changed my settings to match what you suggest. Thank you for your help.

Sorry to be negative, but I doubt if 3198 fixed it. I uninstalled 3191, copied my previous folders for 3062 back in place and reinstalled 3062: all disk settings and data were then back to normal. Then I went directly to 3204, since that has the new settings backup and restore feature, bypassing 3198. The result was that no settings were retained (except for 1 of 11 disks, oddly) and all disks needed to be scanned for the first time. (This time, however, I did a printscreen of my names & locations, and re-entered everything into 3204. I'll let Scanner rescan everything and just move on to the future.)

...just to chime in here...remember that expanders have firmware too. I am running 1x M1015 + 1x RES2SV240 in my 24bay rig for 5+ years now....I remember that there was a firmware update for my expander that improved stability with S-ATA drives (which is the standard usecase for the majority of the semi-pro users here, I think). Upgrading the firmware could be done with the same utility as for the HBA, as far as I remember...instructions were in the firmware readme Edit: here's a linbk for a howto: https://lime-technology.com/forums/topic/24075-solved-flashing-firmware-to-an-intel-res2xxxxx-expander-with-your-9211-8i-hba/?tab=comments#comment-218471 regards, Fred

As per your issue, I've obtained a similar WD M.2 drive and did some testing with it. Starting with build 3193 StableBit Scanner should be able to get SMART data from your M.2 WD SATA drive. I've also added SMART interpretation rules to BitFlock for these drives as well. You can get the latest development BETAs here: http://dl.covecube.com/ScannerWindows/beta/download/ As for Windows Server 2012 R2 and NVMe, currently, NVMe support in the StableBit Scanner requires Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016.

Much sadness.....for some reason my OS SSD will not boot now. It is not even recognised as a boot drive. Stoopid HP ProLiant microserver perhaps, but either way I have some diagnostics to do. It boots to my test mechanic HDD just fine. Strange... On a positive note, my DP files on my data HDDs are just fine. All I need is a platform that will boot and I will be back in business. I tell you, it is awesome knowing that my data is safe and accessible. edit: Tried everything I could think of and got to the stage where a Windows 10 repair install was next. Plugged in the bootable USB stick and the damned thing booted properly! I swear I am going to shift to Linux for this box!! It is driving me nuts. (not really because then I wont have DP....) So frustrating.