3ware 9500 RAID Controller Question

English Hardware
#1

Guys,

I recently purchased a 3ware 9500S-4LP controller. After installing it and creating my RAID 5 Array the openSUSE 11.1 x86_64 installer would could not seem to recognize that it was there.

After tearing my hair out about how to fix this, I found a post on the internet stating that the 3ware software seems to have a problem with an x86_64 proc and more than 4GB of RAM. Sure enough, I pulled out two sticks of my RAM and poof, openSUSE sees the array just fine.

Has anyone come across this problem with any 3ware products or could offer any insight?

It seems to me that 3ware considers openSUSE 11.1 x86_64 as an upstream kernel, so I believe I have the latest driver 2.26.02.011. I am in contact with 3ware, but was just wondering if anybody here has had the same problem.

#2

I’m going to post my solution to this problem just in case anyone else ever comes across it.

The problem wasn’t with the driver for 3ware at all, it was a problem with the firmware for my BIOS which I mistakenly thought I had upgraded along time ago.

Turns out it was the original BIOS that came with my MB, and after an update of 7 revisions, it detects all my RAM and my array just fine.

I’ve been through hell and back with 3ware about this, so in the future if anyone wants to post 3ware questions or PM about them (although I’d perfer the whole community gets the benefit) I’ll do my best to answer.

Joe

#3

Thanks for posting this. Will be useful to others.