I recently got a VRTX w/ 2.5" drive bays. When inserting a drive [1] the `physical disk activity indicator` will blink a few times then all indicator lights go dead. When pulling the drive out I can feel the platter spinning so I know the drive's getting power. It doesn't show up in the CMC either. With multiple drives inserted and spinning the CMC reports:

`Physical Disks: 0`

 

I figured the seller may have miss configured the server. I watched the Dell Quick Resource Locator videos to insure my cables were hooked up in the same way. I saw the only difference was that the backplane expander board was on the bottom slot rather than the top so I followed the video's example and put it on the top. Now I have my backplane expander card on the top slot of the backplane with my two SAS cables going from A/B on the card to 1A/1B on the motherboard respectively. I have my RAID card on slot 1 on the motherboard. I've also tried connecting the SAS cables to 2A/2B and putting the RAID card on the second slot and that hasn't worked either. I tried putting in another SPERC8 to see if it was the RAID card but I got the same error. I'm hoping this is just a configuration  (either hardware or software) issue and that it can be resolved but I fear it might be a bad backplane expander board. 

 

[1] Dell Constellation.2 (Seagate ST9100064SS) SAS 6 Gbps 1TB RPM 7.2k - Confirmed drives work on other servers