PossumsDad

I have just built a new machine for my server. I am using the following parts: Norco RPC-2016 Case Asus Prime Z270-A Motherboard Intel i7-7700 Gen 7 Processor 16 gig Corsair Vengence 2133 mhz Memory Corsair RM850X Modular Power Supply MyDigitalSSD 480GB NVME Drive (Boot Drive) LSI SAS 9207-8i Controller Card Intel SAS Expander Card (24 Port) Port Multiplier I have 17 drives in the pool totaling 33.1 TB I have a Crucial MX100 256 Gig as a work drive And I have a Blu-Ray drive hooked up. I have noticed that whenever I reboot the machine DrivePool just about every time needs to remeasure the pool. Of course after it is done it wants to recheck duplication. Is there anyway to fix this? I ran DrivePool for a couple of years on my old server & it never did this unless I changed the ports where the hard drives were hooked up to. I'm just wondering if the sas card isn't recognizing the drives in the same order each time. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks Phil

I just timed how long it takes this card to get going. When the card shows up on the screen it takes 1 minute 30 seconds to start initializing. It finds all of the drives 20 seconds later. Then the bios info for the motherboard shows up. I hope this is normal.. Please let me know.. Thanks Phil

I feel like a complete idiot. I didn't wait long enough for the card. After 1 or 2 minutes the card said initializing. Then it found my drives and all was good. I've never had a hard drive controller card take that long to initialize but now I know. This motherboard has 3 PCI-E x16 slots. I tried all 3.. BTW the card with the Intel SAS expander is fast.. No complaints. Hell I had to buy a new keyboard for the new computer. The old keyboard was too slow for the motherboard to see it every time. I have my Pool back up and running. Sorry for being dumb.. lol Thanks guys for the help.. Phil

The card is brand new. The motherboard is brand new also. It is a Asus Prime z270-A. I updated the bios on the motherboard to the latest bios but no go. The board is UEFI capable. The Asus utility used UEFI to flash the bios. I've never used UEFI to flash firmware with. Unfortunatly this is the only computer with the slots capable of handling this card. I do know that the firmware on the card is dated 2014. Hopefully flashing the card will help. If you have directions that would be super helpful. Thank you P.S. The LSI tries to load before the bios of the motherboard. So because of this the computer locks up at this time. I cannot enter the bios of the card. Phil

Any help would be appreciated. I have recieved all of my new parts & the server is running great. Except my LSI SAS 9207-8i will not let the computer boot. I get to the first few lines of the LSI screen and all it does is have a flashing cursor. I have tried all 3 PCI-E x8 slots. No good. If I remove the card then windows boots normaly. Any help would be appreciated. Phil

Thank you gj80 for your response. It looks like this is the ssd for me. Now to wait for income tax refund. IRS says I should have it by the 23rd.. Then the fun should start.. Again many thanks.. Phil

Thanks Christoper for your quick reply. I'm getting the Norco 4216. Would the fans blowing across the motherboard help to cool this card? Or is there something else I would need to do? Again Thanks. Phil

HI gj80, I'm thinking about getting this drive for my new build. If I may can I ask you a few questions? Do you like it? If so why. Did they fix the scanner software so that you can see smart status? Thank you for your time & help.. Phil

I was looking at the Samsung ssd drives. Then I saw something that I never knew existed. M.2 NVME SSD drives. Faster than fast. It turns out that the motherboard that I listed above has 2 of these slots. I can even run 2 of these cards in raid 0 for even faster read speeds. I'm looking at: Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD It is rated at: Read speeds of up to 3,200 MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,500 MB/s. That knocks the socks off of a regular ssd. That is 3x faster write speeds than the ssd I listed above. It is also a little over 6x the read speed. That should make a Plex database fly. Thank you Spider99 for getting me to look at Samsung Drives. Phil

Hi Spider99, Both the LSI card and the expander are 6g. The power supply is a single rail 12v unit. Here are the specs: +3.3V@25A, +5V@25A, +12V@70.8A, -12V@0.8A, +5VSB@3A It also has a 10 year warranty. I'll take a look at the Samsung ssd. The processor comes with a fan and heatsink. Was thinking about using that one. Thank you for the suggestions. Phil

I sure do thank you Christopher for your help. I think I have settled on all of the parts for my new server build. Any and all suggestions are welcome. It's been a while since I built a whole new machine. Here are the parts: Corsair RMx Series, RM850x, 850W, Fully Modular Power Supply, 80+ Gold Certified by Corsair Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 2133MHz (PC4-17000) C13 Memory Kit - Black by Corsair Crucial MX300 525GB SATA 2.5 Inch Internal Solid State Drive - CT525MX300SSD1 by Crucial Intel i7-7700 4.2ghz 7th Gen Core Desktop Processors by Intel ASUS PRIME Z270-A LGA1151 DDR4 DP HDMI DVI M.2 USB 3.1 Z270 ATX Motherboard by Asus NORCO 4U Rack Mount 16 x Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays Server Rack mount RPC-4216 by Norco LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301 by LSI Logic Intel RAID Expander Card (RES2SV240) by Intel Thanks everyone for looking at my parts list. If anyone has any suggestions or changes that I should make please let me know. I want this machine to run for a long time. My current server is on it's 10th year. Time for a new one.. Thanks Phil P.S. I'm also going to order the 120mm 3 fan replacement board for the backplanes.

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I gonna go with the: LSI Logic SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller. With the Intel 24 Port Sas Expander. Looks like a winning combo with growth potential. Now on to the search for the right motherboard. Again thanks for your help. Phil

Thank you for your reply. I'll probably go with the newer card. Then I won't have to worry about getting a motherboard with regular PCI slots. I'm now looking at a Generation 7 i7-7700K with a z270 motherboard. Gonna be much faster than my old computer.. lol

Hi all, I've been using DrivePool and Scanner for quite some time. Everything has been running great. It's now time to upgrade some of my hardware. I am taking the plunge and am going to replace the tiring old Core 2 Duo 6420 2.13ghz with a modern i7 6700 3.4ghz processor and motherboard. I am looking at the H170-PRO/CSM LGA1151 ATX Motherboard from ASUS. I am now running 2 PCI-x 8 port sata cards. Super Micro SAT2-MV8. Of course they will not run at full speed in a regular PCI slot but they do run. The new motherboard does have 2 PCI slots. So I can run the old controller cards if necessary. So I am thinking about replacing both of them with: The SI-PEX40097 is the SYBA IOCrest 16-Port SATA III 6G PCI-Express Controller Card. This card, a x4 slot card from IOCREST, uses the newest Marvell 9215 Chipset to add up to 16 drives to your system for an overall massive storage capacity boost. I guess what I'm asking is will this card will work with DrivePool and Scanner or am I better off using my old Super Micro controller cards? Any advice would be appreciated. Phil P.S. I'm running Windows 8.1

Thank you for your help. The wiki article worked perfectly. Again thank you for your quick reply. Phil

Everything with my Drivepool was working great. Then I installed Flexraid. That broke DrivePool. Before I installed Flexraid whenever I copied a file to and from the pool it would show me which drive & which file was being moved under Disk Performance. Now it doesn't show anything. I have removed Flexraid. That didn't fix anything. I did a system restore. That didn't work. I uninstalled Drivepool & reinstalled it. Still when I copy a file nothing shows up under Disk Performance. Any help would be appreciated to get this working again. Phil

I also ran a BBS on a C64 back in the day. I had 2 3.5 inch drives on a 300 baud rate modem. I ran Mustang BBS software. I must be one of the old ones around here as I was in my twenties when I ran it. lol

I enabled advanced settings & enabled "NoWmi" in my current version of scanner. SMART data is now showing up for the new drive. Thank you very much for your help. Phil P.S. Is there any advantage upgrading to the current beta over my version? "v2.5.1.3062"

I have 16 drives in my DP Pool. All of my drives but one have SMART data. I added a Western Digital 3TB MyBook External drive to the pool tonight. The drive is USB 3. I have plugged the drive into my USB 3 card & also into the USB 2 slots on the motherboard. I get no SMART data from either location. I am running Windows 8.1 with 8 gig of ram. I am running Scanner version v2.5.1.3062 Any help would be appreciated. Phil

I fixed it. I manually stopped the service and then started it. Then drivepool came up & was able to access all drives.

I've been running Drivepool and Scanner for several months & have had zero problems with either of them. I purchased 2 backplanes & installed them today. They are Rosewill 3 x 5.25-Inch to 4 x 3.5-Inch Hot-swap SATAIII/SAS Hard Disk Drive Cage - Black (RSV-SATA-Cage-34). Scanner sees the drives just fine. In windows explorer I see the pool just fine. If I try and open Drivepool I get - The background service failed to start, try to restart the computer. I have restarted several times, I have even shut down the computer and I still have this error. I am running Windows 8.1 64bit with 8 gig of ram. Any help would be appreciated. Phil

Thanks for letting me know. I have plenty of room and have 4 more open ports on my Hard Drive cards. So I still have some room to expand. I'll be looking into one of these when the time comes.

Does this product play nice with Drivepool & Scanner? I would be interested on adding this to my server if it does. Thanks Phil

I'm using Windows Defender in 8.1.. No problems here..