Dell and LSI RAID cards not passing along SMART

[CharredChar]

I have a Dell R710 with a PERC6/i and a LSI 9280-8e which have all of it's disks in single RAID0 arrays to use inside of Windows 10. The issue I have with this, which I've seen other tools have this issue too, is it does not pass a lot of information of the disk onto software, it just comes up as generic information. The only tool I have found so far that managed was Hard Disk Sentinel but the software is buggy and painfully slow. I would like to switch to using Scanner, as I am quite happy with DrivePool, to monitor my drives SMART data and email me when ever an issue comes up or maybe even daily with reports like HDD Sentinel does. I actually don't want it to do anything else such as attempting to repair data as the DrivePool duplicates one 1TB set of drives and SnapRAID backs up the rest, I'd rather run a fix or copy the file that way instead of hammering disks for repair. Not to mention I'd probably just warranty it if SMART comes back with errors.

 

I have already went into the Advanced Settings to Direct I/O and checked Unsafe then restarted the service, still nothing

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Right now, there isn't anything we can here. 

 

Specifically, because the drives are all in RAID arrays, we don't see the actual, underlying disk.  We only see the RAID array.  This means that the controller itself is not passing on the SMART data properly.

 

HD Sentinel works by querying the controller directly and grabbing the information from there. This is why the software may be slow and buggy, actually. 

 

 

The best suggestion I can really give you is to grab a SAS 9200-8e or 9207-8e card instead. These are HBA cards, so no RAID support at all, but they pass on all of the SMART data properly. 

 

 

 

Otherwise, the SMART data may not be strictly necessary. The file system and surface scans may be able to detect issues prior to failure. 

[CharredChar]

I see. I figured it was something along the lines of it being in RAID but I was confused why HD Sentinel would find it but others wouldn't.

 

I might actually end up flashing my RAID Cards into IT mode which will allow them to act like HBAs and pass the drive over to the OS instead of requiring a RAID0 setup for each disk. The last couple disk failures have sure been a hassle because of the RAID aspect. this is just one more thing to push me towards doing it. Oh look, another project this weekend!  Thank you. Nevermind, seems IT mode is not possible with this card!

 

Thank you for all of the help.

[Atarres]

FYI the ONLY way you can fix this (as someone who has both those cards and their 8i variants can attest) is to flash them into IT mode. Get the correct firmware and adapt this guide: https://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-2008-raid-controller-hba-information/to your particular firmware, but what you are doing is converting the controller into a JBOD setup. So your disks are detected by smart and therefore the scanner. FYI this is what I did as I encountered the same problem. 

 

EDIT: Further note you can crossflash your Dell Perc card into an LSI version. Plenty of good guides on that and some youtube videos even. 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I see. I figured it was something along the lines of it being in RAID but I was confused why HD Sentinel would find it but others wouldn't.

 

I might actually end up flashing my RAID Cards into IT mode which will allow them to act like HBAs and pass the drive over to the OS instead of requiring a RAID0 setup for each disk. The last couple disk failures have sure been a hassle because of the RAID aspect. this is just one more thing to push me towards doing it. Oh look, another project this weekend!  Thank you. Nevermind, seems IT mode is not possible with this card!

 

Thank you for all of the help.

 

Yeah, that's one of the advantages that HDSentinel has over our software (for better or worse).  

 

And yeah, I checked, the LSI card doesn't have an IT Mode firmware. You're SOL on that. But the cards I listed (SAS9200-8e and the SAS9207-8e) are compatible cards that are IT mode (HBA cards), with no RAID functionality. 

 

The problem is, that you may not be able to convert straight over (RAID to non-RAID). 

 

 

 

FYI the ONLY way you can fix this (as someone who has both those cards and their 8i variants can attest) is to flash them into IT mode. Get the correct firmware and adapt this guide: https://www.servethehome.com/lsi-sas-2008-raid-controller-hba-information/to your particular firmware, but what you are doing is converting the controller into a JBOD setup. So your disks are detected by smart and therefore the scanner. FYI this is what I did as I encountered the same problem. 

 

EDIT: Further note you can crossflash your Dell Perc card into an LSI version. Plenty of good guides on that and some youtube videos even. 

The Dell may be flash-able, depending on the specific version. 

 

But I'm not seeing IT firmware for the LSI card.  Which would be part of the problem.