# SAS drives - damn SUN firmware



## ethoms (Mar 13, 2013)

I have a Sun Fire x4140 with Solaris 10 (amd64) installed. I want to replace Solaris with FreeBSD, it now my prefered UNIX. The problem is, my 8 SAS drives from SUN (rebranded Hitatchi / Seagate) will not detect in my JBOD storage array. I suspect that there is custom firmware that only works with SUN StorageTek controllers.

I use ZFS and I want to replace the storagetek with a non-raid hba so the pool is more portable. I fear if I can't reflash the firmware, I can't use the drives. Shame to waste such expensive drives.

Anyone with similar experience? Can I reflash the drives? If so, how?


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## User23 (Mar 13, 2013)

ethoms said:
			
		

> I have a Sun Fire x4140 with Solaris 10 (amd64) installed. I want to replace Solaris with FreeBSD, it now my prefered UNIX. The problem is, my 8 SAS drives from SUN (rebranded Hitatchi / Seagate) will not detect in my JBOD storage array. I suspect that there is custom firmware that only works with SUN StorageTek controllers.
> 
> I use ZFS and I want to replace the storagetek with a non-raid hba so the pool is more portable. I fear if I can't reflash the firmware, I can't use the drives. Shame to waste such expensive drives.
> 
> Anyone with similar experience? Can I reflash the drives? If so, how?



Did you already test the SAS drives with a FreeBSD-compatible SAS controller?


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## ethoms (Mar 13, 2013)

Can't remember if I tested with FreeBSD. But with the existing Solaris installation the JBOD does not recognize the drives. But same JBOD + Areca non-raid hba does recognize all my Toshiba SAS drives.

It's pretty clear-cut, the Sun drives work in the internal Storagetek hba, but not in external JBOD. All other factors remained the same.

I do know that Sun puts custom firware on the drives so that ILOM/SP can get some stats on the drives.


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