HP H240 Detects backplane but not drives - Help Please

pomtom44 · October 13, 2022

Hi all.

To keep a long story short, I have a HP DL180G6 server which had a P410 raid card
The battery on the card died, and since I wanted to move to unraid anyway, I decided to not replace the battery and just get a new card

I originally got a LSI card, but iv had problems with it (have another thread on that one if your interested)
but after getting stuck I got a HP H240 HBA card

Unraid detects the card fine, and detects the servers backplane, but no drives.
I booted to ubuntu live and installed the HP CLI tools, and again, it shows the card and backplane, but no drives.

I'm currently googling around trying to find a solution or a direction to head, but I figured it might be smart to ask the community as well, as im sure I'm not the only one running into this

I have attached the diagnostics from unraid, and a photo of the output from the cli tool (i tried to save it, but being a live cd I forgot it wouldn't save properly)

nas01-diagnostics-20221013-2001.zip

Emtu · October 13, 2022

Assuming you've double and triple checked that it isn't just a simple cabling issue I'd first try verifying the H240 can detect a directly attached disk.

If that works then the backplane is most likely the issue. That backplane is old, check if it's running the latest available firmware from HP. It looks like it's a 3Gbit SAS expander as well. While it technically should just negotiate at the appropriate speed it might just be fickle about the host device - especially with a much newer 12Gbit card. Some of these 1.5/3.0Gbit SAS expanders weren't as forgiving with card compatibility like we're used to nowadays.

pomtom44 · October 14, 2022

8 hours ago, Emtu said:

Assuming you've double and triple checked that it isn't just a simple cabling issue I'd first try verifying the H240 can detect a directly attached disk.

If that works then the backplane is most likely the issue. That backplane is old, check if it's running the latest available firmware from HP. It looks like it's a 3Gbit SAS expander as well. While it technically should just negotiate at the appropriate speed it might just be fickle about the host device - especially with a much newer 12Gbit card. Some of these 1.5/3.0Gbit SAS expanders weren't as forgiving with card compatibility like we're used to nowadays.

The cabling was fine with the old HP P410 card, so im assuming its okay.
and the fact its detecting the expander and backplane makes me think its all ok.

I was going to test with a breakout cable and see what that detects. just need to find the time to do it.

yes its old, the problem is im limited in what I can get here, either it costs and arm and a leg, or i have to get it overseas and have it shipped which takes weeks if not months, and shipping costs is often the same if not more then the item im getting, so limited as to what i can get.

I believe firmware is all good but ill double check it and see

pomtom44 · October 14, 2022

10 hours ago, Emtu said:

Assuming you've double and triple checked that it isn't just a simple cabling issue I'd first try verifying the H240 can detect a directly attached disk.

If that works then the backplane is most likely the issue. That backplane is old, check if it's running the latest available firmware from HP. It looks like it's a 3Gbit SAS expander as well. While it technically should just negotiate at the appropriate speed it might just be fickle about the host device - especially with a much newer 12Gbit card. Some of these 1.5/3.0Gbit SAS expanders weren't as forgiving with card compatibility like we're used to nowadays.

Breakout cable works fine and detects drives attached