Precision T5600 SAS/SATA Controller Driver

Looks like Dell's Drivers and Downloads for this system are AWOL after the recent support site redesign.

I pinged my Dell contacts to see if they can get that fixed. Can't guarantee the drivers you want will be offered, but we won't know that until Dell finds them... :emotion-4:

Dear Dell Community Users,

I am experiencing the same problem as jHartweck,

I recently purchased the Dell Precision T5600, but i am not able to install Windows 7 because the SAS/SATA Controller Driver is not available.

Did any of you manage to fix this?

I'm looking forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Micha Joosten

IT Administrator

Inther Logistics Engineering

Did you try changing SATA Operation in BIOS Setup to ATA? The default setting is AHCI.

According to the manual, "SATA is configured to support RAID mode". Not sure if that means SATA only works with RAID.

Will ping my Dell contacts, again... :emotion-10:

Sorry ... it says T5600, so the SAS 6 and PERC 6 are not options.  Here is the driver for the SAS/SATA controllers (H310 and H710):

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/2684/DriverDetails/DriverFileFormats?DriverId=DV6JF&FileId=2988882869&productCode=precision-t5600&urlProductCode=False

Just remember that if you have an H700, non-RAID is NOT supported, so you MUST first configure RAID in the CTRL-R utility during POST, or even with the correct drivers, no drives will/can be seen.

Which SAS RAID controller are you using ... SAS 6/iR or the PERC 6/i?  Are you trying to install Windows 7 x86 or x64?

Dear Dell Community Users,

@RoHe: Yes i tried to change the SATA Operation in BIOS Setup to ATA, but unfortunatly that did not work.

@theflash1932: I noticed later that day that this PC contains a Perc H310, and while talking on the phone with a dell employee i finally got the right driver. The link for the Perc H310: downloads.dell.com/.../SAS-RAID_Driver_1DV4H_WN_5.1.119.64_A00.EXE

When installing Windows 7 and you want to load in that particular driver choose the map "Payload" in there is the correct .ini file.

My problem is solved, thanks for the help i've been recieving and i hope others will find there solution with this info to.

Sincerely,

Micha Joosten

IT admin

Inther Logistics Engineering

Can't get the Windows 7 installer to recognize the package. Has anyone extracted it?

The PERC8 package actually worked for me. I was able to install Windows 7.

I am happy the PERC8 install worked for you, I think in the future more people will have this problem. And this site could be the answer for allot of administrators

How are yall extracting the PERC8 package to grab the driver files to put on a thumb drive to load during the Windows 7 installation?

Download the driver at the link I posted (64-bit):

www.dell.com/.../precision-t5600

This is a self-extracting EXE - just run it to unzip the files, then put the extracted files on a USB key.  The other file linked here by mj is a Windows update package and not normally suitable for pre-installation use.

This may be a dumb question/statement but I'm almost 100% positive the T5600 did not ship with a H310 PCI-e card. The hard drives were plugged into the SATA ports on the motherboard. When I first booted the machine I was able to presse ctrl + r to get into a SATA controller. Now that option is gone. Is it possible to boot hard drives from the SATA ports marked HDD0 and HDD1 and if so which drivers do I use so that Windows installer disk sees the hard drives.

Just for clarification the only things plugged into the PCI/PCIe ports on the motherboard are 2 Nvidia Quadro 4000s. No other cards and plugged into the motherboard, nor do I remember any other cards being plugged in. Thanks!

Information on the T5600 is fairly incomplete at this point (in my opinion - no diagrams of motherboard ports/connectors, no info on RAID options, etc.), so some of this will be guessing on my part, since I don't have a Tx600 system to look at.

In the BIOS, under SATA operation, what is it set to?  My understanding of the docs makes me guess that AHCI must be enabled (if there is not a specific RAID option) for RAID to be used.  If you used to have a CTRL-R option but now you don't, it is possible this setting was changed, especially if messing around trying to install an OS that didn't see the drives (the Internet is full of directions to change to ATA to avoid loading drivers - bad idea).

The H310 comes in three types, two of which are "mini" models, so there may be a special small, discrete, or even hidden PCIe slot somewhere inside the chassis that enables the H310.  Check pages 37-39 of the PERC manual to see the different types of cards - the T5600 manual is not clear on which model it has:
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/Storlink/PERC_8/en/UG_PERC8_en.pdf

 just recently received the Precision T5600 Workstation. The original configuration was setup in RAID 1 with 2 SATA drives. I killed the RAID and loaded a single SAS drive in the RAIDs place. When I loaded a Windows 7 installation disk, windows could not see any hard drives. So my question is there a place where I can download the SAS/SATA controller's driver and throw it on a thumb drive to load during the Windows 7 installation process?

Thanks.