Innodisk SATADOM

[William Katsak]

Hello,

I just built a brand new box based on a Supermicro A1SAi-2750F. Beautiful board, everything went together nicely except for one thing: I picked up a Innodisk SATADOM for a boot drive (this one to be exact), and the board doesn't see it. I actually bought two, and it sees neither of them. I've tried a couple different power cables, different SATA ports, etc. The cables I am using are getting power from molex. I checked the voltage going to the unit, it is fine. I've even tried it on a different motherboard (old Intel D525MW). No dice.

I would be surprised if two units were defective. Anyone use these units successfully for FreeNAS or anything else?

Thanks,
Bill Katsak

 

[William Katsak]

BTW I just checked and the ixSystems 1U FreeNAS box that I just bought a few months ago for my lab has almost the same part (just a different form factor) and it works fine. Weird.

 

[Mr_N]

Yeah im using a 4GB one of those and didnt have any issues installing freenas on it.

 

[William Katsak]

Yeah im using a 4GB one of those and didnt have any issues installing freenas on it.

Where did you get your power? From the mobo, or molex? Did your power cable come with the device?

 

[Mr_N]

Yeah it came with a little power cable tiny connector for the satadom to regular molex

 

[cyberjock]

Any chance you hooked them up backwards and fried them with reverse voltage? ;)

 

[jkh]

Any chance you hooked them up backwards and fried them with reverse voltage? ;)

The connector is keyed to prevent it from being plugged in backwards. Give them SOME credit. :)

 

[cyberjock]

One model I looked at when I was there you *could* have hooked them up backwards. Turned out the wrong cable was included!

 

[William Katsak]

The connector is keyed to prevent it from being plugged in backwards. Give them SOME credit. :)

What he said :)

On further research, it seems that Innodisk has different part numbers for with and without "Pin-7 VCC", which is a newfangled feature that allows boards that support it to provide power through the SATA connector. This is only supported on some VERY new Intel server boards from what I can see.

What I am thinking is that these parts won't properly run with the normal power cable (though if this is the case it makes no sense that the connector is still there). I started an RMA for these and ordered a couple with the other part number from a different vendor, so we will see what happens. Of course, maybe they are just defective and I am reaching.

 

[William Katsak]

I should note that the power cable didn't come with the device, I had to source an Innodisk cable elsewhere. This supports my theory. (I did check the spec sheet for the device to make sure the cable I bought was providing correct polarity and voltage).

 

[William Katsak]

Update: I called to check the lead time at the other vendor (memorydepot.com, who seem to sell the entire Innodisk line), and they told me that on this particular series (D150QV), the devices supporting the Pin 7 VCC do indeed NOT also support the regular power cable, even though the connector is there. However, the lower profile version (D150QV-L) does support both. Go figure. Caveat emptor.

 

[William Katsak]

Another update:

Don't buy the Innodisk D150QV for use on the Supermicro A1SAi-2750F. I attached mine and everything appeared immediately. After a couple hours it became apparent that something was wrong. Sometimes on power cycle, the DOM will refuse to come up. Power cycle again, and it usually appears. I have a few on hand, so I tried others, with no different behavior. (I should note that it seemed to work a bit better on a SATA2 port, but I didn't test conclusively).

After some investigation, I found this FAQ at Supermicro's site (http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=18334):

Question:
Can I use SATADOM in server 5018A-FTN4? Motherboard is A1SRI-2758F.
Answer:
Yes. There is 1 SATADOM power connector on board. Please only use SATA3 DOM. Most SATA2 DOM may have compatibility issue with C2000 chipset. You can use any SATA port for the SATADOM.

As many of us know, the A1SRi-2758F is the Rangely version of the A1SAi-2750F...the boards are virtually identical.

I called the place I ordered the Innodisk D150QV from, and the guy there confirmed that he has heard some rare cases of incompatibility with this DOM, and he believes that it is because that particular model is not fully SATA compliant, and uses an internal SATA-IDE converter. Apparently the newer Innodisks are fully SATA3 compliant, and the 16GB model is actually cheaper than the D150QV 16GB. I ordered a SATADOM-MV 3ME 16GB, so lets see what happens.

 

[William Katsak]

Update:
I finally got around to putting my SATADOM-MV 3ME 16GB onto my A1SAi-2750F. Seems to work like a charm. I connected it to one of the SATA3 connectors with a short SATA extension, and so far, it hasn't failed to appear on powerup (the D150QV wouldn't show 50-75% of the time).

 

[jgreco]

Ick. Great job of debugging though.

 

[William Katsak]

I know. You live and learn though. Hopefully this will help others.

 

[Z300M]

Update:
I finally got around to putting my SATADOM-MV 3ME 16GB onto my A1SAi-2750F. Seems to work like a charm. I connected it to one of the SATA3 connectors with a short SATA extension, and so far, it hasn't failed to appear on powerup (the D150QV wouldn't show 50-75% of the time).

Any advantage over booting from a USB stick?

 

[Ericloewe]

Any advantage over booting from a USB stick?

Not at the moment, but 9.3 will overhaul everything boot disk-related. ZFS will allow for some very nice stuff, I presume.

 

[William Katsak]

Any advantage over booting from a USB stick?

Nothing huge, but it boots MUCH faster than a USB 2.0-based stick, and some GUI operations are also a lot faster.

 

[cyberjock]

The D150QVs are known to not work quite right with the Intel Avotons. ;)

 

[William Katsak]

The D150QVs are known to not work quite right with the Intel Avotons. ;)

Well, I know that NOW! :)

The D150QV is on eBay now if anyone wants to take it off my hands for a non-Avoton application :)