Posted on by Nick

Flashing an LSI 9211-8i IR card with IT Firmware

I purchased a brand new, sealed LSI 9211-8i card from a vendor on eBay at a much better price than at my normal (ie Newegg, Amazon) places. Unfortunately, when I went to flash it from IR to IT firmware I kept receiving a “Failed to Validate Mfg Page 2” error.

Lots of Googling later, I finally found a method that worked to revive the card. Since my process was slightly different from the dozens of methods I found, I’m going to add another revision to the internet (and for my future reference).

The card was probably an OEM design, misleadingly sold as a retail LSI card, but I decided to keep it because I was able to get it working reliably.

Here’s my firmware update process:

  1. create a bootable USB flash drive using Rufus
  2. copy the following items to the bootable flash drive
    1. Megarec DOS utility and Dell SBR file from http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.615 (Toolset_PercH310 to LSIMegaraid.zip)
    2. DELL 6gbtsas firmware and DOS flash utility from https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fujitsu-d2607-sas2008-it-mode.2513/ (Firmware Package Version: 07.01.24.00)
    3. LSI 9211-8i P7 firmware and DOS flash utilty from LSI website (navigate to downloads for 9211-8i, choose archived)
    4. LSI 9211-8i P19 firmware and DOS flash utility from LSI website (navigate to downloads for 9211-8i, choose current)
  3. Follow the instructions at https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/fujitsu-d2607-sas2008-it-mode.2513/ with the following changes:
    1. get the SAS address
      1. megaoem -AdpAllInfo -aAll -page 20
    2. flash a dell sbr file with megarec
      1. megarec -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
    3. clear the flash with megarec
      1. megerec -cleanflash 0
    4. hard reboot
    5. flash the Dell firmware using the Dell utility
    6. hard reboot
    7. flash using the P7 dos utility and firmware
    8. flash using the p19 DOS utility, firmware, and bios
    9. hard reboot
    10. set the SAS address
    11. verify with sas2flsh -list

To perform this process I _had_ to use a DOS bootable USB flash drive because of the P7 DOS utility. It appears that the P7 UEFI utility is either missing or never existed on the internet. Also the DOS megarec utility was a requirement, the process didn’t work without the erase and sbr commands. Another requirement was a motherboard which was compatible with both the sas2flsh.exe DOS utility and the 9211-8i card. After PAL errors on four motherboards (3 intel, one AMD), I found an AMD motherboard which worked, the ASUS M2N-MX.

The entire process was time consuming and a frustrating experience. Here’s hoping LSI releases a simple, raidless, affordable 8+ port SATA card in the future.

Update (2016-04-17)

I successfully flashed a Dell H310 using the instructions and files at https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/ using a UEFI firmware desktop.