Practitioner forums this week are full of the same storage questions: an older LSI controller that never shows up at POST, drives on an expander's external ports that are not detected, and ex-array SAS drives that throw errors or refuse writes. Here is what the common cards actually are, why these failures happen, and which current controllers replace them.
Storage controller questions keep coming back on the practitioner forums. In the last few days operators have reported an LSI 9270-8i that the motherboard BIOS never detects, SATA and SAS drives that disappear when cabled to the external connectors of an Adaptec SAS expander, an OEM-branded MegaRAID card stuck in a firmware fault after being cross-flashed, enterprise SAS drives logging tens of thousands of not-ready errors behind a new HBA, and drives pulled from a storage array that drop into a read-only state after every cold boot.
None of these are exotic faults. They come from mixing controllers, firmware and drives that were designed for different platforms, which is exactly what happens when estates are extended with second-user parts. The fix is usually to understand what each card is, what it was built to connect to, and when it is time to move to a current tri-mode controller.
What the common second-user controllers actually are
| Card | Type | Controller chip | Host interface | Drive ports and connectors | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM ServeRAID M1015 | Entry RAID | LSISAS2008 | PCIe 2.0 | 8 x 6Gb/s SAS/SATA, two SFF-8087 | RAID 0/1/10; RAID 5 and SED support need the M1000 Advanced Feature Key. Withdrawn product |
| LSI MegaRAID SAS 9270-8i (LSI00326) | RAID with cache | LSISAS2208 dual-core ROC | PCIe 3.0 x8 | 8 x 6Gb/s SAS/SATA, two SFF-8087 | 1GB DDR3 cache, RAID 0/1/5/6/10/50/60, optional iBBU09 battery |
| LSI SAS 9300-8i | HBA | SAS3008 | PCIe 3.0 x8 | 8 x 12Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s SATA, two SFF-8643 | Up to 1024 end devices; Integrated RAID 0/1/10/1E option |
| Broadcom HBA 9500-8i (05-50134-01) | Tri-mode HBA | SAS3808 | PCIe 4.0 x8 | 8 internal, one x8 SFF-8654 | 12Gb/s SAS, 6Gb/s SATA, NVMe; up to 1024 SAS/SATA or 32 NVMe devices |
| Broadcom MegaRAID 9560-8i (05-50077-01) | Tri-mode RAID | SAS3908 ROC | PCIe 4.0 x8 | 8 internal, one x8 SFF-8654 | 4GB cache, CacheVault CVPM05; up to 240 SAS/SATA or 24 NVMe devices |
| Broadcom HBA 9600-16i (05-50111-00) | 24G tri-mode eHBA | SAS4016 | PCIe 4.0 x8 | 16 internal, two x8 SFF-8654 | 24G SAS; up to 240 SAS/SATA or 32 NVMe devices; 17W typical |
Broadcom issued a discontinuation notice in April 2017 covering its SAS2008, SAS2004 and SAS2108 based boards, mapping the 9211-8i to the 9300-8i and the 9260-8i and 9261-8i to the 9361-8i. Anything on that silicon is now second-user only.
Why the card never shows up
- Option ROM, slot and platform. Older MegaRAID cards show their configuration screen at POST through an option ROM. If the board's storage option ROM policy, boot mode or slot wiring does not suit the card, that screen never appears and the operating system may not enumerate it either. Before writing the card off, prove it in a known-good platform, then work through slot type, lane width and the board's option ROM settings.
- OEM firmware. IBM, Lenovo, Dell and HPE ship Broadcom silicon with their own firmware and IDs. Cross-flashing an OEM card to generic IT mode is common in homelabs, but a failed or partial flash leaves the card in a firmware fault state, and the OEM no longer supports it. In a production server, buy the card the server vendor lists.
- HBA versus RAID. A 9300-8i is an HBA that passes drives straight to the operating system, which is what ZFS, TrueNAS, Ceph and software-defined storage want. A 9270-8i or 9560-8i is a RAID controller with cache. Mixing the two roles, or expecting an HBA to present RAID volumes, is behind a large share of 'missing disk' reports.
Expanders, cables and drives
- The Adaptec 82885T is a 36-port 12Gb/s SAS expander with seven internal SFF-8643 and two external SFF-8644 connectors. It takes up to x8 from an HBA or RAID card, fans out to up to 24 direct-attached drives internally, and its eight external ports are intended for storage expansion to enclosures. It draws power from a PCIe x4 slot or a 4-pin auxiliary connector, never both at once, and passes no data over the slot.
- SFF-8644 is the external mini-SAS HD connector and SFF-8643 the internal one. If drives work on an expander's internal ports but not on its external ports, cable the drives internally or attach a proper external enclosure rather than breaking out the external port to loose drives.
- Drives pulled from storage arrays often carry array firmware or a non-standard sector format, and some enterprise drives ship formatted as 4K native rather than 512. Behind a generic HBA that can show up as link resets, not-ready errors or a drive that will only mount read-only. Check the drive's model, firmware and sector format against the controller before it goes into a pool.
- Current-generation tri-mode cards, such as the Microchip Adaptec HBA Ultra 1200p-32i (32 internal tri-mode ports, PCIe 4.0 x16, 24G SAS, SmartIOC 2200) and the Broadcom 9500 and 9600 series, use SlimSAS SFF-8654 internally. Older SFF-8087 and SFF-8643 cabling does not carry over without the correct cables.
The OEM equivalents in current servers
| Part number | Controller | Form factor | Cache | RAID levels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P47777-B21 | HPE MR416i-p Gen11 | PCIe plug-in, 2 x8 SlimSAS | 8GB | 0/1/5/6/10/50/60 |
| P47781-B21 | HPE MR416i-o Gen11 | OCP NIC 3.0, 2 x8 LP SlimSAS | 8GB | 0/1/5/6/10/50/60 |
| P47785-B21 | HPE MR216i-p Gen11 | PCIe plug-in, 2 x8 SlimSAS | None | 0/1/10 |
| P47789-B21 | HPE MR216i-o Gen11 | OCP NIC 3.0, 2 x8 LP SlimSAS | None | 0/1/10 |
| P58335-B21 | HPE MR408i-o Gen11 | OCP NIC 3.0, 1 x8 LP SlimSAS | 4GB | 0/1/5/6/10/50/60 |
| PERC H755 | Dell PERC 11 | Adapter, front SAS or front NVMe | 8GB DDR4 | 0/1/5/6/10/50/60 |
| HBA355i / HBA465i | Dell PERC 11 / PERC 12 HBA | Internal HBA | None | HBA (no RAID) |
| H965i | Dell PERC 12 | Internal RAID | See Dell spec | See Dell spec |
All five HPE Gen11 MR controllers use Broadcom silicon on a PCIe Gen4 x8 host interface and support NVMe, 12Gb/s SAS and 6Gb/s SATA drives. The cached HPE models take an optional Smart Storage energy pack: the 96W lithium-ion battery (P01366-B21 with 145mm cable, P01367-B21 with 260mm cable) or the hybrid capacitor (P02377-B21 with 145mm cable, P02381-B21 with 260mm cable). The Dell PERC H755 uses the Broadcom SAS3916 RAID-on-chip, and current PowerEdge AMD platforms such as the R7615 list the HBA355i, H355, H755 and H755N from PERC 11 alongside the H965i, H965e, HBA465i and HBA465e from PERC 12.
The ETON view
Most of the failures in this week's threads come from one decision: buying the controller, the cables and the drives separately from different sources and hoping they agree. For a homelab that is part of the fun. For a hosting provider or an enterprise extending a production estate, it turns a cheap part into days of downtime.
Our advice is simple. Match the controller to the platform first: an HPE Gen11 server should get the MR controller HPE lists for it, a Dell PowerEdge should get the PERC or HBA Dell lists, and a white-box or software-defined storage node is where a generic Broadcom 9500 or 9600 HBA makes sense. Decide HBA or RAID before you buy, not after. Then buy the drives with the controller, tested together and with the sector format and firmware confirmed, rather than pulling drives from a retired array.
On lifecycle, SAS2008 and SAS2108 cards have been discontinued since 2017 and are only worth fitting to keep an existing system running. For anything new, a PCIe 4.0 tri-mode controller costs little more and means the same bay can take SAS, SATA or NVMe through the next refresh. Because we source both OEM and generic cards, we can quote them side by side and vendor-neutrally. When the old controllers and drives come out, we buy them back.
Related infrastructure
- Controllers/Raid Cards
- HPE RAID controllers
- Dell RAID controllers
- HPE SAS hard drives
- Disk Storage & Enclosures
Category: Storage · Vendor: Broadcom, Microchip, HPE, Dell · Technology: SAS HBA, MegaRAID, tri-mode storage controllers, SAS expanders · Last verified: 04 Oct 2026 · ~6 min read
Sourcing this kind of infrastructure? Talk to ETON about availability, lead time and pricing.
