Experience with the HP Smart Array E200 in non-Proliant setup.

[Vincy Boy]

I am planning to get a cable to use 2 15000 rpm drives with a HP Smart Array E200 but I have been wondering if these would be compatible with my MSI Eclipse SLI. I have plugged in the E200 and it is recognized and the driver loads. I connected a WD SATA drive to it and was unable to get it to see the drive (I think). Now I am hesitant to get the cable for the SAS drives as I am afraid that the E200 may only be fully compatible with a Proliant server. Has anyone used the E200 with other motherboards besides the Proliants they come with?

Thanks as always
Vincy Boy

[Vincy Boy]

Ok, I just tried two 320Gig WD's on the E200 and it is not recognizing the drives. I aslo cannot get to any raid config utility at startup. I was thinking that the E200 is only compatible with the Proliants but I connected it to the ML310 with the same drives and it did not see the drives either. I am now wondering if the 2 SAS drives which are HP branded would work with any other SAS controller I may buy. Sigh. I guess my dream of 15000 rpm RAID 0 will stay that way for now

[Jizzler]

Do you have the SATA mode on the Eclipse set to RAID? This can sometimes keep an external controller from loading it's BIOS.

[Vincy Boy]

No had it set to AHCI... Hmm I wonder if that may also cause a problem. The thing is the E200 did not even recognize the drives while in the proliant server. Will try IDE mode though.

I have even disabled the onboard controllers now. All i get is "Smart Array initializing" after which it says no logical drives detected. So I' say this is a no go.