Microserver SATA

[_Air_]

I am using an HP Proliant Microserver N36L in a small business, with Windows 2008 R2 Foundation. It has 2x250GB drives in a RAID 1 array. These are the original HP SATA 3G drives.

I have added two new 1 Tb SATA 6G drives, part HP 659337-B21. They are seen in the BIOS at POST, but the AMD embedded SATA RAID Controller does not see them. Is that because they are 6G drives? Is there an update to the firmware for the embedded array controller? 

Any ideas on adding new drives?

Thanks

[Jimmy Vance]

Depending on how old the firmware is, you  probably need to update the chipset (system ROM) firmware to see the larger capacity drives. 6G drives should operate at 3G speeds when that is all the controller supports

[_Air_]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't see any firmware for the AMD RAID Controller. I see Chipset drivers, but those are for Windows to drive the hardware, not firmware updates.

My thought was that it might require a firmware update, but I don't see one available.

I know the drives will operate at 3G, but I am hoping the controller will at least see them.

[Jimmy Vance]

The controller is part of the chipset, so any update would be in the latest system ROM

[_Air_]

I don't see a System ROM update available. There's a BIOS update, but no other firmware.

[Jimmy Vance]

BIOS = System ROM

[_Air_]

Thanks for that.

Do you know if the BIOS update will solve it, or just might solve it? I would have expected the new drives to be backwards compatible with the older controller.

I did try the BIOS update, but the instructions are not very clear. When you run HPQUSB.EXE it creates a bootable USB, but I don't see the BIOS update on it. Its not clear from the instructions if you need to copy the Flat Files or not. When I just followed the instructions the server booted to the USB drive, but it came up with "No command found" or something like that. It sat at the C:\> prompt but clearly was not going to do anything.

Thanks

[Jimmy Vance]

No I don't know for certain updating the BIOS will resolve your issue.  I know in other cases regarding large capacity drives a firmware update was required before the system would recognize the larger drives. When the N36L was first relased, I'm not sure 1TB drives were available.

[Torsten.]

According to the notes you should get the latest driver directly from AMD:

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/detail?sp4ts.oid=4248036&swItemId=MTX_eaaacad1e439476197ce3f3fcd&swEnvOid=4064#tab1

The quickspec lists 2TB disks only:

http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04111672.pdf

[_Air_]

Thanks Torsten,

This is what puzzles me. The Quickspecs list a 1 TB 3G drive 507772-B21. I have a 1 TB 6G drive 659337-B21.  I would expect it to be backward compatible. I am not sure now if it should be compatible, or not. The drive works fine in the eSata port (IDE) but is not recognised in the embedded SATA port configured in the BIOS as RAID.

The drivers listed on that link to AMD are Windows drivers, not firmware.

I would try the BIOS update but I don't know if it should fix this compatibility problem and I am a bit reluctant to run it as the server is working fine otherwise. I will run it if I think it will fix the drive compatibility problem.