S3200SH with 3TB drives

[PEnt]

Hello,

I have S3200SH board and want to create RAID5 array of four 3TB drives (I have also another RAID1 array, but that one works fine). I am using Intel Matrix Storage Manager as a raid controller. I have updated board bios to the current version, but in the raid configuration utility, I see the 3TB drives as 746GB drives.

I have done some research and found that drives >2TB are supported from Intel Matrix Storage Manager oprom v 10.something, but the newest board bios update installed oprom v 7.5.0. Is there any way how to update just the oprom, or any other way how to make the raid configuration above work?

Thanks

Petr Ent

[David_A_Intel]

Although the controller is capable to handle volumes greater than 2TB http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm (up to 256TB) for data volumes, the controller does not support hard disk drives greater than 2TB.

In your case, the controller is only going to see the exceeded capacity of the drives (746.5GB). I would recommend using 2TB drives instead in order to take advantage of the maximum capacity of your drives.

[PEnt]

Thanks for quick reply, but I have already bought the hard disks, so I would like to try all the options before going on.

I understood that the problem with hard disks >2TB is in the controller firmware (Intel Matrix Storage Manager option ROM), which is updatable. Official board bios (which contains also option ROM) updated the option ROM only to version 7.5.0 ( which is from 2007 :/ ). Is there any way how to update just the option ROM? In EFI Shell, or any other tool? I am willing to accept certain amount of risk, as if I am not able to make the board work with my 3TB drives, I would rather replace the board than buy new (smaller) drives.

I read some interesting options about bios modding on win-raid.com site, but they warned that Intel bioses are packed in non-standard way and that special tools are required. Does anyone have experience with that?

[David_A_Intel]

From our end, Intel® does not provide individual packages to update the OpROM of the RAID controller.

We do not encourage our customers to used modified packages as we do not keep control of the changes this modified packages are going to do on your system.

We have seen /thread/39012 cases where other customers have encountered errors after attempting such updates. At this point, I might suggest upgrading your system board or upgrading your RAID solution (perhaps a hardware RAID solution).