Default firmware for this guide is:
2118it.bin
Version 20.00.07.00
Release date: 11-FEB-16
WARNING: If you have an Integrated, Mini or Mini Mono Perc H310 do NOT try to crossflash with these steps.
So this guide will be the update to my first guide… without double checking everything I’m pretty sure it’s almost identical except for the link to the ZIP file. So I’m not sure why I retyped all of this instead of just updating the ZIP file in the old guide. Anyway…. the difference between the old and new ZIP file is the sas2flsh and sas2flash versions. The default sas2flsh.exe and sas2flash.efi in this new ZIP file are p5 which allows you to pretty much overwrite/downgrade any firmware. This will help mainly those who were getting stuck on the H200 cards. I’ve also included driver, firmware and sas2flash folders that contain a wide array of sometimes hard to find versions.
If you’re just looking for a list of commands that need to be executed then check the very bottom of this page.
Things you’ll need:
- Bootable USB (link). You can follow this post on using Rufus to create a quick FreeDOS bootable USB Drive.
- For those with newer UEFI motherboards you’ll need bootx64.efi (link) (alternate link).
- You’ll want the version: Precompiled x86_64 UEFI Shell v1 Binary.
- This should already be included in the LSI-9211i8i.zip I’ve provided in the next link.
- LSI-9211-8i.zip (link). The main firmware file in this ZIP is P20. This has been updated to support the latest version of FreeNAS. The ZIP also contains versions of the tools that will make this process a bit easier. The default sas2flash tools are P05 which allow downgrading and flashing of non-compatible firmware in many cases.
- Thanks to mobilenvidia and Bryan Vyhmeister (brycv.com) for providing/finding a lot of the files and information used here.
- Both of these guys have provided great guides on flashing IBM M1015 cards and other great information.
- If you have a Dell Perc H310 and your computer won’t boot then you’ll need to cover PCIe pins B5 and B6. You can cover them with a thin piece of electrical tape. Thanks to Andy_Steb from AVS for sharing this tip he found.
- Make sure you don’t cover the A pins on the other side.
- Make sure you don’t cover the A pins on the other side.
- Your card may have a sticker on it marked SAS Address. If it does then write this down so it’s easily accessible.
Moving on to the steps:
- First thing we need to do is prepare the USB drive.
- Once you’ve created the bootable USB drive in step 1 you want to copy the contents of LSI-9211-8i.zip onto the USB drive.
- The root of the USB drive should look like this:
- Next we’ll want to reboot and boot into FreeDOS/MS-DOS.
- With the bootable USB drive inserted (may work best in a USB2.0 port on the back of the computer) a reboot may boot directly into the USB drive. If not you will need to select the drive from a boot menu. This will be different for every motherboard but should be similar.
- In the below screen shot you can see an ASUS UEFI BIOS Utility screen. At this screen you can hit F8 and select a boot device. The USB drive shows up indented and labeled Patriot Memory. Yours will most likely be labeled by whatever type of drive you have.
- In the below screen shot you can see a GIGABYTE UEFI BIOS screen. This is presented on the Save & Exit tab. The drive also shows up indented here and labeled Patriot Memory PMAP.
- Clicking or Double-clicking on Patriot Memory should boot into the DOS environment as shown below.
- Next we can begin flashing the card.
- If your card doesn’t have a sticker with the SAS Address you should be able to follow these steps to obtain the address.
- If you have a Dell Perc H310 then follow these steps.
megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20
- Hit enter once or twice and you should scroll through screens that look like this:
- Write down the SAS Address.
- If you have a Dell Perc H200 then follow the below steps. (If you have a UEFI motherboard then see the steps below for UEFI motherboards)
- To save the SAS Address we’ll need to use sas2flash.
sas2flsh.exe -listall
- You should get a listing of all the cards installed.
- Use the number in the first column to get the SAS Address for the card.
sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list
- This should dump all the information for the card including the SAS Address.
- Write down the SAS Address and continue to the next steps.
- Flash the card with the Dell 6gbps HBA Firmware.
- The steps for flashing the H310 and H200 will be the same.
megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
- If this command fails it should be safe to proceed to step 2.
megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
- Reboot the computer and boot back into the USB drive.
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw
If flashing a M1015 you can use the 2118p7.bin instead of the 6GBPSAS.FWs2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
(replace this address with the one you wrote down in the first steps).- Reboot the computer and boot back into the USB drive.
- Flash the card with the LSI 9211-8i Firmware.
- The same steps will flash the card to a LSI 9211-8i.
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
- It should ask you if you want to flash anyway. Type Y to proceed.
- Reboot the computer back into your OS. You may need to remove your USB drive if it was automatically booting.
- Alternatively you can use sas2flsh.exe to flash the 2118p7.bin and then use s2fp19.exe to flash the 2118it.bin. Depending on the revision of the card this method can provide cleaner output for the card details.
- If you’re running linux or BSD then you should be finished. If you’re running Windows 7/2008 R2 and possibly Windows 8.1 then you’ll want to update your drivers.
- Click this (link) to take you back to my previous guide on how to update the drivers.
UEFI Motherboards
- Now if you have a UEFI motherboard and received an error like this:
"ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program."
when trying to run sas2flsh then you’re going to have to run the flashing steps in an efi shell. All of the other instructions should work fine. When you reboot after runningmegarec -cleanflash 0
is when you’ll need to enter the efi shell. - As noted above for the H200 you will need to run sas2flash from the UEFI shell in order to save the SAS Address.
- The EFI boot shell should already be on the USB drive.
- After the
megarec -cleanflash 0
completes, instead of rebooting into the USB drive we’ll want to reboot into the UEFI shell.
- After the
- Using the same two UEFI BIOS configuration screens I’ll show you how to enter the UEFI shell.
- With the GIGABYTE board we will just select the UEFI USB option highlighted below.
- With the ASUS boards you will most likely need to disable secure boot first. This could pertain to other boards as well.
- For the board I was using this was under the Boot tab and named Secure Boot in the Advanced section of the utility.
- Open that option and select Other OS.
- Save those settings and reboot back into the UEFI BIOS utility.
- I had issues launching the UEFI shell from the below menu in the exit screen.
- You should be able to select Launch EFI Shell from filesystem device but that did not work for me.
- I was however able to select ASUS EZ Mode and then use F8 to select the boot device.
- Selecting UEFI: Patriot Memory this time.
- This should launch a shell that looks like this:
- From here you’ll need to select your USB drive.
- Type the following command to display the devices with a -b to pause on each full screen.
map -b
- As long as you have 1 USB drive inserted it will most likely be the first device that shows up labeled
fs0
.
- To select that device type:
fs0:
- Your
Shell>
prompt should change to afs0:\>
prompt.
- Now you can run your sas2flash command. Note that the efi executable is named sas2flash.efi instead of sas2flsh.exe.
- To save the SAS Address for the Perc H200 run the following commands:
sas2flash.efi -listall
- You should get a listing of all the cards installed.
- Use the number from the first column to get the SAS Address for the card.
sas2flash.efi -c 0 -list
- This should dump all the information for the card including the SAS Address.
- Write down the SAS Address and continue to the next steps.
sas2flash.efi -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW
If flashing a M1015 you can use the 2118p7.bin instead of the 6GBPSAS.FWsas2flash_p19.efi -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
(replace this address with the one you wrote down)- Reboot the computer and boot back into the UEFI shell.
- The same steps will flash the card to a LSI 9211-8i.
sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin
- It should ask if you want to flash anyway. Type Y to proceed.
- Reboot the computer back into your OS. You may need to remove the USB drive.
- Alternatively you can use sas2flsh.exe to flash the 2118p7.bin and then use s2fp19.exe to flash the 2118it.bin. Depending on the revision of the card this method can provide cleaner output for the card details.
- If you’re running linux or BSD then you should be finished. If you’re running Windows 7/2008 R2 and possibly Windows 8.1 then you’ll want to update your drivers.
- Click this (link) to take you back to my previous guide on how to update the drivers.
- With the GIGABYTE board we will just select the UEFI USB option highlighted below.
Here is a quick summary of steps to reference:
megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20
Write down SAS address.megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
If this fails move on to next step.megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
Reboot.sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw
Reboot.sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flsh.exe -0 -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list
Write down SAS address.megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
If this fails move on to next step.megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
Reboot.sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw
Reboot.sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Run the following commands in the DOS prompt:
megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20
Write down SAS address.megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
If this fails move on to next step.megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
- Reboot into UEFI shell and run the following commands:
sas2flash.efi -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW
Reboot and return to UEFI shell.sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Boot into UEFI shell:
sas2flash.efi -c 0 -list
Write down SAS address.
- Reboot into DOS prompt:
megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
If this fails move on to next step.megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
- Reboot into UEFI shell:
sas2flash.efi -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW
Reboot and return to UEFI shell.sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -f 2118it.bin
- or sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Please leave a comment if these instructions were helpful or if you found them to be too confusing. Thanks!
You can also reach me via PM on reddit. /u/techmattr
also i would like add, when someone has problems like
a) Cannot enter BIOS (but PC boots normally)
b) 2nd Dimm not recognised
also do cover the 5 and 6 pins and your problems will be solved 🙂
Up in the long section the order is:
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
But down in the summary section the order is:
sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
or sas2flsh.exe -0 -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Which is it?
It doesn’t matter. Executing a flash command won’t overwrite the sas address.
Can anybody share details of what this command’s purpose is? It looks like you first flash it with one firmware version, then flash it again with the newest firmware?
sas2flsh.exe -0 -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
Also, is there some reason we aren’t flashing the BIOS to the card?
THANK YOU!!! This saved my bricked card!
Hi
Mr Matt do u have any ideas what to do if ‘megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin’ were success, but after reboot and typing ‘sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw’ i have this:
“Chip is in RESET state. Attempting Host Boot…
ERROR: Firmware Host Boot Failed!
Due to error remaining commands will not be executed.
Unable to Process Commands.
Exiting SAS2Flash.”
If i type ‘sas2flsh -c 0 -list’, my adapter is listed as:
‘Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B2)’ and it says that firmware download is required, but when i type ‘6GBPSAS.fw’ or ‘2118p7.bin’ i get same Error message as before 😦
Did you run the cleanflash command?
Hey Matt!
Nice one, i just read your reply. Yeah that was the case.
Previously when typing ‘megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin’ i had success (looks like false positive message). After typing ‘megarec.exe -cleanflash 0’ and rebooting, everything started to work and i flashed controller without any problem!.
Thanks!
I have the same issue, I’ve restarted multiple times but can’t for the life of me get past megarec.exe -cleanflash 0. Everything afterwards fails. Any ideas? I have an H200 and have bios.
I think there is another version of dos you can use to get around this but I need to look into it more. If you’re using a Dell server try flashing in a PC. Preferably an older one.
Okay, somehow I managed to get the 6GB firmware on it, and have readded the sas address. But when I try to flash the 2118IT.bin it keeps saying cant flash IT over IR firmware. I even tried megarec.exe -cleanflash 0 but no luck. Tried on an old DL380 G6 as well as a relatively new pc with uefi. Same message.
Hi Matt, my H200 keeps reporting that adapter reset failed after flashing. any idea on what I can do here?
All you really need to do is a manual reset of the adapter or reboot the machine. No need to keep flashing.
Hi Matt, same problem as the bloke above. How do I do a manual reset?
Anyway to verify that everything worked properly after this? I completed all steps with no errors. Used a older 2950 to flash. I flashed a H310 with this guide and have it in a Dell R710 running freenas and I keep getting system crashes when I write to disks. after tshooting iv narrowed it down to the HBA. I ordered another and going to reflash that one. anyone have any issues with these in a R710?
Also i have a question about flashing the SAS address. In the instructions you list 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx. When i ran the command i used the address i wrote down and didn’t put the 500 in front of it. Is it required to put the 500 and then the full SAS address? or only s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd mySASaddress
What ever your SAS address was is what you put. Mine was 5XXXXXXXXXX he just put 500 as a idea of what numbers to look for.
No spaces/dashes I re-verified after doing it with the sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list and I had the proper address I started with before flashing anything.
Does anyone know the purpose of the 4 pin header on the H200 labled J_UART ???
I have successfully run all of the commands up to and including the cleanflash command on an H200 card. After rebooting, when I try to run the command to load the 6GBPSAS.fw, it gets to the Firmware Download section and then errors out saying it failed to download the firmware.
After looking for troubleshooting info, I decided that maybe there was a problem with on of the earlier steps. I rebooted and re-ran:
megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
Both commands completed successfully. After rebooting, the “sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw” command again errors out with a failed to download message.
Any thoughts?
Hey did you get this working? Im having exactly the same issue 😦
This guide worked like a charm on my Thinkcenter D20 with the H310 DOS instructions! Flawless! I did add one thing at the end….I wanted my adapter to have the LSI BIOS in place, so, I can do CTRL-C at boot up and get into LSI’s configuration menu…totally optional, but I wanted it.
So, on the USB I created above, after I followed the instructions for H310 DOS I navigated to: \Firmware\6GbpsSASHBA_07.03.06.00_A10
and ran the command: sas2flsh -o -b mptsas2.rom
and done! Now, the card will display the drives on bootup. Nice…
Can’t seem to flash even the first one using UEFI (6GBPS). The older LSI-zip containing the same 6GBPS and flashing it went smooth. When I try to flash the 2118p7.bin, it gives me an error. 2118it.bin is a no go.
Guess I’ll try to flash with non-UEFI mobo.
Flashing a H200 to the LSI IT mode firmware (P12 or P20) did not work for me, sas2flash (in EFI) refused to flash IR mode to IT mode, even when cleaning the firmware (in DOS) using megarec first.
However, the latest Dell IT mode firmware (ftp://ftp.dell.com/sas-non-raid/dell_6gbps-sas-hba_a08_r306009.exe) works just fine using 3 TB SATA drives, including S.M.A.R.T. pass through.
I am not sure whether the LSI firmware offers even more features, but for now, the combination of IT mode, 3 TB support, and S.M.A.R.T. is just what I was looking for.
Thanks for the link!
I am really interested in knowing more about this.
Did dell finally update the native firmware for IT mode? If so the one big benefit is in a server like mine (Dell R710) you can keep the card in the dell HBA slot and it will work, if you flash it to LSI you must use one of the other PCIE slots and usually need longer cables as they are farther away.
I would like to find a list of all the firmware updates (not sure where to find them on dell’s site) and the changelog for those updates.
You can find more Dell HBA related files here: ftp://ftp.dell.com/sas-non-raid/
The firmware files are named as follows: dell_6gbps-sas-hba_VERSION_RELEASE.exe and you can just extract them to get the firmware and bios files.
Here you can also find RELEASE.txt files, which contain the release notes. The r306009.txt file for instance contains the release notes for the a08 firmware that I used.
Matt, first off all – a huge Thank you !!!
In my case flashing get wrong, after all steps was successfully (and correctly) completed (Perc8 H310), card wasn’t recognized in BIOS and no booting from drives. Finally I decided to flash LSI BIOS as last resort. I copied file “mptsas2.rom” from \Firmware\6GbpsSASHBA_07.03.06.00_A10 to the root of USB drive and flashed it. (Thanks to ChromeCapone for idea)
sas2flsh -o -b mptsas2.rom
The only this last step bring H310 card back to life and works as expected in IT mode. FreeBSD used mps driver to pick up my drives.
Thanks again !
P.S.
BTW, the primary reason to reflash H310 was not only inconvenience with inability to use “smartctl”, but because stock firmware corrupted secondary/backup copy of GPT record (). After successful restoring with “gpart recover GEOM” and reboot, stock H310 firmware always wrote its superblock and overwritten GPT spare record even H310 was configured as non RAID mode (JBOD).
After reflashing H310, this misbehavior finally gone and GPT isn’t overwritten anymore on reboot/shutdown and no errors like:
ZFS GEOM: mfisyspd0: corrupt or invalid GPT detected
in “dmesg”
Hi I have flashed the same card (H310) successfully and I tried to boot a windows 10 hd I had without luck, the drive was not recognized. Is it normal?
Will be the card ans it’s drives be recognized after installing a sata operating disk in the motherboard sata?
Also had to mask pins 5/6 of the card. Without, the computer didn’t start.
Does always have to be masked those pins?
Thankyou
Gus
This comment saved my build project! Thank you!
Can someone tell me how to flash Dell Perc H310 with the latest bios?.. (H310 is not on a Dell server so when i try to run the update an error occurs)
Just followed this, perfect guide and had all the files.
I am so happy you took the time to put it together. I was able to take a $30 Dell H200 and make it a more expensive IT Mode LSI card.
One IMPORTANT issue I had was using the Dell R710 that I intended to use the card on, the megarec.exe commands do not work. They just hang forever.
I had to break out a old 1u SuperMicro server I got a long time ago for a lab and mess with it for like 2 hours to get it to boot from USB (no boot menu and strange way to set boot devices, and the card did not fit I actually took a sawzaw and cut the chasis so the card would fit :))
Once I got that up and going, everything worked well.
Cant wait to put that H200 to use.
I did the second option for flashing to the 2118p7.bin first before the IT firmware, would be nice if you added a bit more info on the benefit in that.
Again thanks!
Hi, thanks for the guide! I wonder please if anyone knows if the H310 card will work in the same PCI slot where the Perc 6/1 which is replacing is (Dell R710 server). Or do I need to move it to another slot? Many thanks
Yes if its still dells firmware, no if your cross flashing it to a LSI card (most likely the case)
Hi Matt, another question if you don’t mind. Someone here https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/6rx4nj/h310_card_ithba_mode_in_dell_r710_which_slot/ says that the firmware can be flashed without a bios, is there such an option and please where/when can we enable it during the update process? Many thanks
It should be noted that the `megarec` commands won’t work on some Dell servers. Specifically I wasn’t able to run it on 3 separate Dell R510s; I had to temporarily put the card in a normal desktop PC we had lying around for `megarec` to run properly.
Des not work on Dell R710 either.
I had to put it in an old SuperMicro 1U server I had around. The card did not fit so I cut the chassis 🙂
First of all, that you mattr for that guide.
In mi case i had some issues following the steps indicated by mattr in my HP Microserver Gen8. The revision of my H310 was A00.
Following are the steps that i did to achieve to complete the process.
Before to start, i realised that default 6GBPSAS.fw in root doesnt work for me. The only that work for me was /Firmware/6GbpsSASHBA_07.01.33.00_A03.
To be more easy in command line to reah that folder i changed the name to 6GBPS3
Also i overwrite the deault 2188it.bin in root for the one that you could find in /Firmware/6GbpsSASHBA_07.01.33.00_A03 ( one time i had an error that said “file corrupt” so i overwrited that file )
Start FreeDOS USB boot..
1) megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20 (Write down SAS address.)
2) megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin (If this fails move on to next step, in my case the result was success )
3) megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
Reboot.
4) cd Firmware
5) cd 6GBPS3 ( the folder that we renamed previously to start )
6) sas2flsh.exe -o -f 6GBPSAS.fw
7) sas2flsh -o -b mptsas2.rom
Reboot.
7) sas2flsh.exe -0 -f 2118p7.bin
Reboot
8) s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
9) s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ( SAS Adress from Step 1 )
Final reboot and working 🙂
Is supposed that once flashed the card (PERC H310) is able to boot any OS (Windows 10) in this case? (followed the guide without any problem) ?
Had to be pins 5/6 always masked? or it deppends on the motherboard?
(my motherboard refuser to start without the pins masked)
Thankyou
Gus
I try to flash my Dell H310(E105106) with a newer firmware. But after erasing the flash i cloud not flash the 6GBPSAS Firmware. SAS2FLASH reports that no LSI Adapter cloud be found.
Could someone help me?
Phill93
The funny thing is that I do have LSI-9211i4i card and it does have MPT2BIOS, it does see my 8TB drive and can work with it Windows, is RAID card and does not have battery or extra RAM just one less SAS port.
Should I just extract BIOS from it and flash my H310 card? How?
I previously wrote:
Hi, I have this H310 Perc Precision card.
It does not recognise my 8TB HGST HDD.
It has 20.12.1-002 firmware.
I tried to update the fw to newer one with stock tools, but it says wrong file. I assume it has something to do with it being “Precision” which the “normal” upagradable card is not.
Well, with the help of this article and the other one called “How to revert your H310 to stock”, I was able to flash it with 20.13.0-0007_A08
It shows Power Edge Server card 2013 during boot.
But if it did show the 8TB drive in card’s bios as 900GB disabled drive with original firmware, it does not show anything at all with later one.
Now I read that there is no way to get over 3TB HDD on H310 Perc to work ??? so I decided to flash it with LSI-9211i8i firmware.
The flashing went successfully, the card shows up as Dell 6GBPS HBA in Windows.
What happens with this IT version is that the cards’s BIOS is gone. It is fine because it does not stop during boot but there is no way of looking inside it and checking what happens there. E.g. if it is disabled or what.
Are there any Windows tools of looking into cards BIOS?
In Windows it shows only smaller drives attached to the same card at the same time but not the big 8TB one.
The thing with the IT version is that it is not good for me anyway as I want to use it on Mac but there is driver only for IR version.
I have ordered a Rocket card which works with MAC OOB but I am still curios to finish this task.
So I tried to flash it with 2118ir.bin. Which went successfully but it did not bring the BIOS back and no support for my HGST.
I tried to megarec -m0flash it with various ROMs as I understand that it installs the BIOS, but it was not possible with any of the 2118i*.bin on card.
I wonder why, as it is still a power edge card, lsi or dell, right?
I also read that it is not possible to flash the IT version of LSI with IR version because it does not have battery and RAM dimm.
It seams weird because the H310 card is RAID card and has BIOS even though it does not have a battery and an extra RAM. I understand that a card does not have to have a battery to be RAID (?) as it only would make it loose some cached data when power failure but not impossible.
So could anybody explain, which file is firmware, which file is BIOS. How do you flash each and which you can cross. Sounds almost like dog breeding. Please understand the humour here.
The step-by-step guides are good when you have specific task described in it at hand. But the very moment you step away from the guide, you are deep in woods as it does not explain you what is what.
By the way, please move that reference part to the top of the post as it is the most read part after you read and done the whole part for several times and only need reminder. for dozen more times.
Thank you!
David
wave-gadgets.co.uk
Just upgraded a Dell H200 using the UEFI method, as the DOS method gave me …PAL.. errors.
Just a nuisance, everything fine. As I was planning on booting off a disk attached to the H200,
I downloaded mpt2sas.rom and flashed using
sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin -b mptsas2.rom as documented here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-flash-lsi-9211-8i-using-efi-shell.50902/
As I boot my NAS hardly ever, the extra boot time is not a concern.
Matt Trying to flash a H200 on a r520 Dell power edge. When i run both megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin & megarec.exe -cleanflash 0 Its sits there with:
“MegaRaid Hwrcontroller recovery tool. Version 01.01-004 February 05, 2010
Copyright (c) 2006-2008 LSI Corp:
Supports 1078 controller and its successors. ”
I let it sit here for about an hour without any changes. Any ideas?
I’m having the exact same problem. Did you ever figure it out?
I’m also having this issue. Were you ever able to get it to work?
I had this same issue with my r710. I had to put the h200 in an old desktop in order for the megarec commands to work. After that, the whole process took around 15 min.
My (successful) experience using this guide: just wanted a dumb HBA for 6 drives, so a PERC H310 was ideal for me. I had problems with FreeDOS, megacli just hanged and I couldn’t get sas address. I did not want to screw it up so I digged out my old MS-DOS install disks and created a VBox VM to get it installed. Then I converted the .vdi to raw .img and DDed the .img to a usb flash drive. After that I could simply transfer the files for firmware flashing to it and everything went smoothly along the guide to the H310 in IT mode. System is non-efi Asrock P55M PRO with core i5 650 and 4GB of ram. I didn’t have to mask the pcie pins.
Hi, I wonder please if anyone had luck flashing the H310 inside a R710 Dell server.. unfortunately I don’t have any other machine/motherboard where I could install the card 😦
I can’t even manage to boot freeDOS through a USB thumb drive (it’s a 3.0 model).
Many thanks for any suggestion!
I am flashing my cards while booting from DOS floppy image with NTFS support via grub. You probably forgot to format your USB with HP formatting tool.
I didn’t format the USB drive, I just dd’ed it by using Gnome Disk.
HP formatting tool? For a Dell Server? Please explain 🙂 Thanks!
I could not flash the H310 on a Dell R510, R610, and R710. I had to install the card into a Cisco C220 server to perform the flash. To boot to a USB drive press F11 and select the device OR change the boot order in the BIOS.
Thank you for your help with this. Just one note that when I was flashing I noticed that your instructions for the H200 BIOS had the order for setting the address of the card different in the short version vs the full version. I don’t think it makes a difference but the consistency was confusing a bit. I ended up setting the address as the last step as indicated in the compressed instructions. Also thanks for compiling all the necessary files together. I started grabbing them from the sources but you made it so easy.
How do you go back to the stock H310 firmware setup for the Dell? I ended up at the point where things just aren’t working out correctly for me and need to go back to stock.
Hello,
I have a problem, whatever happens I “Firmware Download Failed!” in the step for 6GBPSAS.FW, however I did everything to the letter. it is a dell perc h200 that I just received.
thank you in advance
Hey Matt (and team) – Having some issues with UEFI H200 Crossflash. I don’t see any comments that have had similar issues.
Here is a link to the reddit post I made of the issue and a summary of the problem.
Hey all, I am having a ton of problems flashing my Dell h200 into LSI 9211-8i. The plan is to run the h200 card in IT mode to be able to run jbod (IT Mode) with unraid.
I have been following this guide
Here is a summary of commands and the problems I have had
Boot into UEFI shell:
sas2flash.efi -c 0 -list Write down SAS address. //This actually does not produce the SAS address. The card comes up as SAS2008(??). I will insert a picture to show what i get
Reboot into DOS prompt: megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin If this fails move on to next step. //This did work for me megarec.exe -cleanflash 0
Reboot into UEFI shell:
sas2flash.efi -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW Reboot and return to UEFI shell. //This worked out ok
sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118it.bin //Here is where things get dicey, I tried this command and the commands below. See the second picture for that error, all things look good until the reset, then if fails and stops the program. or sas2flash.efi -o -f 2118p7.bin, reboot, then
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -f 2118it.bin //didn’t get this far
sas2flash_p19.efi -o -sasadd 500xxxxxxxxxxxxx //didn’t get this far
https://imgur.com/a/sHbi8
https://imgur.com/a/GYQM5
Is it possible that i’m using the wrong version of sas2flash.efi? One that doesn’t read the controller?
I have tried other slots with the same issue.
PS. I get the PAL error when I try to flash under DOS, however megarec does work.
Had something weird start once I flash my h310 to 9211-8i IT mode.
Flash via EFI was easy enough, but now when booting into xpenology only 6 of 8 drives show. The strange part is if only 4 are used, they show on either SAS A or SAS B. But trying to combine the two sets of 4 drops something out.
Should I try the dell HBA option?
I am testing SSDs on this card. At one strange ocassionally I could only see 3 out of 4 at a time in any combination on a or b or mixed. I concluded ot had something to do with the disks. No other 4 ever showed this behaviour in their hundreds. Maybe they have same trunkated serial number and card can’t refer to them as individuals.
Thanks for putting this together. It really made flashing my dell H200 easy once I put it in a non dell device. When I tried to flash the card in an r510 or a dell desktop (I don’t remember the model) megarec.exe would hang.
YES! great guide, and it worked GREAT! so stoked to finally have one of these for my freeNAS
I have two x wd60purx (6tb) drives… And the h310 doesn’t see the drives. Has anyone got 6tb drives working with the h310 or lsi 9211 or the ibm m1015?
Yes, I have 10Tb HGST drive working with it.
Thanks @gaisevskis. Your reply kept me searching for an answer…and I finally figured it out. I’d like to share with the group.
I found this manual on the WD site: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/958
It tell you to put a jumper on PINS 3-4 to enable the power management. The power management needs to be enabled with RAID cards…and modify RAID/HBA cards like we all have. H310, 9211, M1015….
The drives are fine when plugged into the onboard SATA controller with a regular desktop.
However, the manual is wrong… I put the jumper on pins 3-4 and my 9211 still didn’t recognize the drives. I moved the jumper over to pins 5-6 and BAM, the LSI 9211 found the drives!
Now my 2 x 6TB WD Purple drives are working perfectly with the HBA!
I really hope this helps someone else!
Hello,
thank you for your guide. It saved my time and money. Only i did not note the sas address but beside that, everything is OK!
Without problem i saved the H200 card with this guide.
I wanted to thank only!
And i want to add;
i could not use the megarec commands on R510 server for H200 card. That’s why i put the card to a desktop pc and upgraded on it.
Without flashing the 6GBPSAS.FW, without this step, it was not possible for me to flash the it mode firmware or other firmwares.
I flashed it on a desktop pc, on bios the megarec command and on uefi shell the flashing commands.
thanks again!
This worked flawlessly! Thank you for taking the time and putting this together!
Hi, me again 🙂
Can the card be flash in a Dell T310 server?
Cheers
I flashed my H200 about a year ago, but recently when trying to update my Dell R710 with the Dell update ISO, it reports that the FW is 00.00.00.00, and then halts. Other than that, it has worked fine.
Please see this screenshot: https://imgur.com/HAb6rWB
Any idea what’s causing this, and how to solve it?
Can you exclude storage controller from the update?
I’m not aware of any way to exclude it other than physically pulling the card, which I guess I could do – but it’s a bit of a pia.
Anyhow, shouldn’t the card show a firmware version? Is it correct that it just shows 00.00.00.00?
How long should running “megarec.exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin” take?
Less than a minute
I am wondering then why does it sit there for minutes. I’ve gotten worried and rebooted it during this phase because it just sits on a screen with a blinking cursor and never brings back a prompt. Does this mean something about the card and that I have to follow another procedure to get this flashed? I have it connected to a Dell PowerEdge R710, with no SAS cables plugged in to the device right now (did test it with drives connected as well).
For me this command never seems to finish, and when I try the 2nd command it fails, saying it can’t find the PCI device. The SAS card itself does actually show up when using the sas2flsh.exe commands, so I am a bit lost as to why these commands fail. Still have hope though 🙂
I flashed my Perc H-310 in a Dell Poweredge T320. It worked great, FreeNAS now sees the drives and can access the SMART functionalities. It did see them before, but no love with smartd.
Anyway, i have a question. Since the flash, the card isn’t detected by IDRAC at all and from a thermal perspective, the fans never spin down anywhere close to the state before the flash. Does anyone know how to get it to play nicely with IDRAC? The lifecycle controller does recognize the card as an LSI, and everything passes through fine, but it seems like it’s treated arbitrarily as a foreign card and as a result the noise has rendered the server unfit for home use. This is without having configured the drives at all!
A bit late, but yes, depending on your Dell generation you can look into “ThirdPartyPCIFanResponse” and set that to disabled.
https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/us/en/04/poweredge-c6400/idrac_3.15.15.15_ug/overview
I’m new to all of this server carry on, but I can’t even get all the files on the boot usb. The LSI folder has 147MB of files and the FreeDOS disk volume has 90MB free. How do you sort that out?
Are you using a 100MB USB stick? If so, you can just get a larger USB stick.
Or you could delete the Firmware, Drivers and sas2flash folders from the unpacked folder. They aren’t needed. They are just extra files in case anyone needed them.
I’ve tried two different UEFI motherboards now (ASRock and ASUS) and I’m getting the same error on both. After booting into UEFI shell and running :
sas2flash -o -f 6GBPSAS.FW
It downloads the firmware, flashes it, then,
Resetting Adapter…
Adapter Reset Failed!
Due to error remaining commands will not be executed.
Unable to Process Commands.
Exiting SAS2Flash.
Any ideas? Will pay you with beer.
Anyone having trouble seeing SATA drives? flashed a couple of H310 cards and they could see SATA drives before but not after the flash to IT mode. SAS drives can be seen, just not my SATA drives.
Reblogged this on and commented:
Dell Raid To PC WOW
Hi, trying to upgrade the firmware for my pair of Dell H310’s. But I’m stuck on the first step, when I boot from the FreeDOS USB stick I made with Rufus, and run “megacli.exe -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20”, I only see this:
“DOS/32A warning (9004): mouse initialization failed”
Any help with this? I’ve seen that error all over Google, but no one ever mentions how they get past it. Thanks!