I just discovered that the T7910 does not recognise HDD's with SAS Enabled in the BIOS with UEFI mode. SSD's are fine. Is this expected behaviour?
SAS PERC controllers need F6 mass storage drivers.
Integrated RAID Controller
The PERC H330/H730P storage controller driver
https://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER04038968M/2/SAS-RAID_Driver_M1N4H_WN32_6.604.06.00_A00.EXE
is installed by the F6 method.
You cannot point to the EXE file. Rename .ZIP and extract the contents to a flash drive to point to.
Chipset drivers are not native to windows.
Nothing whatsoever to do with UEFI
perc sas 3
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Speedstep, aren't SSD's also mass storage devices? The T7910 BIOS recognises my SSD drives but not my HDD drives! I tried three different SATA Hitachi Ultrastars with SAS on and none of them are recognised by the T7910! Again, the T7610 is just fine. Why one and not the other?
Is this after you updated firmware with DELL firmware update for SAS 3008 from their support page?
For me, that update nearly bricked my T7910, until I discovered that the problem is that UEFI refuse to accept the internal SAS controller.
Disable Secure Boot and it can find all your harddrive again.
I have tried find info about this and so far, I suspect DELL put the wrong UEFI firmware in the package. I suspect they put in the non-signed version.
According to my findings, UEFI only accept signed firmware in secure boot.
And, to make it more difficult, support for my T7910 ended August 2020, so I cannot have this problem corrected by DELL:
I need a firmware for UEFI that is signed.
Maybe this is your problem too.
Thanks for your contribution @PeterSfa. I ended up not using any HDD's! I agree that there is something odd about the T7910. It doesn't seem to like "legacy" hardware at all.
One other issue that I have been struggling with, for over a year now, is the white PCI slot (not PCIe) on the motherboard. I simply cannot get a parallel port adapter card to work in it.
Someone suggested that I should buy an old parallel port printer, and see if I can make that work, but I suspect that the problem is with the T7910 system.
With "Enable Legacy ROMS" on, the BIOS reports that an ISA bridge is present in the PCI slot. Further, Windows 10 Device Manager reports that the device is working properly, with no conflicts, but the card simply refuses to work. I constantly get a "The system cannot find the device specified" error message.
Very frustrating, because I tried everything, and my T7610, with an almost identical configuration works just fine. Go figure!!
@PeterSfa Your best option, if you want to boot an OS from a PCIe NVME M2 drive on the T7910, is to use a quad Dell adapter card, which is expensive.
I have one, and can report that a Samsung 950 Pro stick works fine with it as a boot drive. Not all do! The others are fine for storage but not for booting, so be careful.
I wouldn't waste money on single third party adapter cards because they are a bit "iffy". Most simply do not work.
The Dell card may turn out to be more economical in the long-run. I'm sure that your time is more valuable than testing stuff eventually destined for the scrapheap.
Have you thought about using a normal PCIe drive? Samsung and Intel make fast large capacity models. Again, you must be careful. The Intel Optane, for example, may not work with the T7910 at all. I'm not aware of anyone using one.
Yes what I had in mind from the beging was DELL Duo or Quad. When I dig into it I discovered they do not support RAID.
Here in Thailand I can buy a Dell Ultra Speed Drive Duo, for about 1790 TBH, that is around 60 USD (new). If I would buy on eBay or similar, the shipping would make it too expensive compared to what I buy here locally.
I was thinking about RAID for speed, so a striping was what I had in mind. I make a copy of my boot drive from time to time and I can afford the time it takes to restore my system if needed.
Data is on another drive.
HighPoint make a RAID NVMe. I used them before for SATA RAID and had no problem with them at that time. I saw this modell: https://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-ssd7202-overview.htm But it is new, so maybe wait and se what people say about them. The ad claim it is bootable.
I am curious about this HighPoint NVMe RAID.
About the NVMe drives, yes I have look into them a little bit, but to my understanding they are similar to using a Duo or Quad card from DELL and put M.2 NVMe on them.
I also belive the Quad card would be cheaper in the long run. But, then again, I have never had one of those, so I do not have experiense with them.
In old times they where only HDDs mounted on a PCB and into the PCI, not much difference.
Today with NVMe and PCIe its another story.
I use my T7910 manly for CAD and software development. In CAD feel the most performance is in the grapichs, but I belive my compiler would gain speed with faster NVMe in RAID 0 mode.
Boot time would also be faster, but, most of the time for boot is the BIOS enumerating anywhay, soo.
I was thinking about maybe erase the BIOS version on the SAS controller and only use Firmware with UEFI. I have not tested, but as long as I use only UEFI, the BIOS should not be needed on the controller.
That would bypass the SAS Bios time it makes before the DELL LOGO, some time saved. But, then again, I only boot it once a day, not a big deal.
Highpint also have a Quad bootable version.
https://www.techpowerup.com/248873/highpoint-releases-bootable-quad-m-2-nvme-raid-card-the-ssd7102