Since my Synology is 12+ years old and running on its last legs it was time to buy/build a new NAS, and why not give TueNAS a go!
I have been reading about TrueNAS for the last 2 weeks, and recently bought a used Dell Poweredge T140 (Xeon E-2124 - 16GB DDR4 RAM - PERC H330 RAID card).
And i guess you guys know where this is going
While some people note that using the H330 in “HBA” mode works fine, others note that the drives don’t show up as they should and have reliability & performace issues.
Just to avoid any problems the best thing to do should be to flash it to IT/HBA mode, however everywhere I go on the internet it links this page to the solution on how to do it: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/flash-crossflash-dell-h330-raid-card-to-hba330-12gbps-hba-it-firmware.25498/
3 guesses: that page has been taken down
Since it is my first time flashing add-in/RAID cards i would have really liked to have a step by step guide on how to do this.
Anybody that can help me out with this / show me in the right direction?
…is to get your hands on a proper HBA. You may even find one that is already flashed to IT firmware (ArtOfServer on eBay).
The T140 is a standard tower, isn’t it? It doesn’t use a weird size of proprietary card. Does it even need a HBA to connect the drives rather than using motherboard SATA ports?
Hi Rich, a question connected to your recent experience, with the H330 Raid card; Did it work out after starting using it to configure your truenas server?
Many people on the forum advice a “proper HBA” and in those cases it is adviced to buy and replace. I wonder why that it. Does your H330 in IT mode (HBA) work well with truenas? Did you experience any surprises afterwards?
Thanks for sharing. If others readers could share the same info for the H730 , is it possible to use this card in IT mode? Like is stated before, there are too many different answers on the forum for this critical question. It gives a hard time for starters.
My 2 cents. Thanks
Well my server is running for about 3 months now, and I have not had any issues. all the disks (4x 8TB) show up correctly and run in RaidZ1 without any errors.
That is good. So, no speed issues, high CPU, noise etc etc? Then, what is the reason not to use these IT flashed perc cards as is stated on this forum in other posts? I do not understand. Thanks and good luck with your great server.
The really important thing here is not that the card is running correctly now, but what happens when a minor or major technical issue does occur with one of the disks and whether the card handles it correctly.
If the card is now flashed with IT firmware and is showing up as an HBA, that should be OK I think.