DL120G6 won't boot with PCIe->SATA card & connected drive

[MSoft]

Hi,

I've got an DL120 G6 machine with 4xHDD connected to the mobo controller in a RAID10.

I am trying to add an SSD to be used as a cache space for an app server.

The mobo does not support more than 4x HDD connected to it, so I bought a PCIe to SATA3 expansion card. (Its chip is Asmedia 1061), and an Intel 535 SSD.


However, when everything is connected, the machine fails to boot into Windows. (If I disconnect the drive's either power, or data cable, the boot process completes even with the PCIe board in place.; I also tried with another HDD just to be sure the problem is not in the SSD).


When I power the machine, everything seems fine. Mobo's boot screen comes up. Then the HP NIC boot agent, HP b110i RAID controller and the PCIe card screen is last (showing the connected SSD/HDD).
On neither of the screens there is an error of any sort whatsoever, nevertheless the boot process stops just before starting Windows (Server 2012). The screen is blank with just an underscore blinking on the top left  end of the screen. I tried disabling the SSD in the BIOS boot order with no result.

Any suggestions?

[FM-ISS]

Hi Friend we should consider the correctly supportability of this SATA 2 Expasion card , this one is not supported by this server .
The PCI Slots support only PCiE G1 and G2  

http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04128298.pdf?ver=3 page 4 .

The HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller supports SATA drives only

Some Addtional controllers must be found on Page 19 but none of those Controller support SSD Disks .

My sugestion is that you acquire some Sata hard driver bigger than all that you already has the Maximum that you can Expand is about 4 x 2TB = 8TB 

**About the windows 2012 wont boot , that this controller won´t support the expansion PCI .

**Please veirfy the supportbility feature of the server the 2012 do not support DL120 G6

Check the OS support matrix .

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/supportmatrix/windows.aspx#.Vh5JpvlVhBc

regards 

Flávio Moreira 

HPE Employee 

[MSoft]

Hi Flavio,

These are the expansion card's specs: http://www.chronos.com.tw/Product/G/MP1061/MP1061.htm

Doesn't "PCI Express Base Specification Rev. 2.0" means it's PCIe G2?

I know that DL120 G6 does not officially support Windows Server 2012, but the DL120 G7 (which I also have) supports it and has the same b110i controller, with the same firmware.

I don't have problem with space, but with speed.

I don't want to spend several hundred dollars on a second HP storage controller as I don't need RAID capabilities or anything smart whatsoever. The drive will be used only as a temporary cache storage for a program with high I/O. Unfortunately because of the data's size that is written simultaneously I cannot use RAM drive.

I don't know if there are any settings in the BIOS that I can fiddle with to make it work or it is a Windows-related issue. Suggestions are welcome.

Edit: Just tested the PCIe board and Intel SSD on a ASUS P9X79 & Win10, everything is working fine...

Edit: In the card's boot message says something like "Connected on PCIe Gen2"