Using HP Smart Array p400 hardware RAID card on a consumer motherboard
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- Опубликовано: 3 окт 2024
- Trying out some enterprise-level devices on a home desktop PC, just for fun.
It seems to be possible to build an inexpensive home server using this type of configuration. The used SAS drives and controllers are very cheap on ebay etc, also SATA drives can be used. Battery-backed cache, which this hardware-RAID card has, would make the write speed "skyrocket" in some occasions. So look for controllers with the battery pack included.
Onboard SATA and software RAID functions on most boards are also good options for many applications.
This system's total power consumption, with an AMD Athlon 4450e processor and Quadro NVS 295(geforce 8400) varies between 85 and 105 watts. So it is not the most effective system, but not very power hungry either.
Latest 7200rpm SATA drives would be possibly the best option for home use for capacity, performance, noise and power consumption.
HP Smart start bootable CD can be used to configure the P400 card, enabling its options and setting up arrays.
nice. I was considerimg buying one of these on ebay and converting an old PC into a NAS.
Hi, cool video, I have this controller on a HP ML350 but it reports hard drive overheat with consumer drives as they do not have the sensors the card are looking for! so the Fans spin up to 90% which is so loud I cant use it.. otherwise it works great with Xpenology loaded on to it getting 112MBps throughput on 1GBit network
this is an old post, but have you got the latest firmware for the P400 controller? I hear there are a few performance improvements, in particular in RAID 5 configs...
This card has version 7.24 firmware, which seems to be newest on HP website. I haven't tried RAID 5 but thanks anyway!
Hi, thank you for sharing this usefull information. I have an Hp Ml370 generation 5 with 2 identic Lsi sas array 400/256 card. It will be fun trying to find some old Hp workstation motherboard to work with. Hp z800 are fairly cheap in refurb condition, do you think it will work?
Thanks. Yes it would be nice if they worked on a Z800 as they are still great machines. But I don't know if it would work, because I once built a "retro" gaming PC using a HP Z600 (2x LGA 771) board and I could not get this SAS card working with it. But I'm not sure if it was my fault, or the card was incompatible with that too.
@@rangleri Hmmm.. Failure in Z600.. Will searching for more info.
What sort of break out cable are you using? I tried this on a ASUS Crosshair AMD board. Didn't work. It would boot fine but the P800 just wouldn't see anything connected to it. I now have a ASUS Maximus VIII board and I think it just might work.
Hi, this is only a SFF-8484 -> 4x SATA adapter cable. Some of the plastic on the SATA and power connectors had to be cut because the SAS drives use that combined power+data connector, and the SATA connector does not fit physically. It is electrically compatible though, you just need to make sure the pins don't move as it will cause a short circuit. A better way would be to use real breakout cables.
This isn't the best card to use on normal motherboards, I tested many boards too and this was the only one to work with it. I couldn't get it to use the write cache when the battery pack isn't connected.
How you see if it works, the options become availebe during boot after it initializes, and you should see the drives in the card's setup menu.
What version of Windows are you running this on and where did you get the smart array software from?
J Rite
Hi, it is Windows 7 Professional. The configuration software is included in the card's own memory and it can be accessed during the card's boot up process.
@@rangleri thanks for the reply
Just wondering if you have any pointers im trying to run a p400 card on a gigabyte Ga-p67a-ud3r-b3 motherboard (Windows 7) with a 8x1 backplane and all i want to do is read a sas hard drive for backup purposes. Windows device manager comes up with
>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
>IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
>! VIA 1394 OHCI compliant host controller (with a error 10 message under status)
And i cant see any options that apply in bios settings
If my motherboard is not compatible that's fine
Thanks again J Rite
If you see this "Press F8 to run the Option ROM Configuration" etc, then it is likely compatible. If it only initialises and then proceeds, the drives and the card will not show up in the device manager. I reckon that this card doesn't have anything to do with that VIA 1394 controller, nor IEEE 1394 bus host controller-those might be some firewire controllers you have on your system.
@@rangleri ok thanks again the p400 doesn't come up on my boot screen so its not compatible 😔and i forgot about that firewire card i hadn't used/installed