The boot roms are completely optional and while nice, they cause the boot to be slower and they don't add anything really. Make sure you don't accidentally flash an SSD or motherboard (or other hidden) LSI 2008 controller before continuing. wendell I bought a new LSI card and it still isn’t working with my PC(previously posted about my problems here: LSI SAS 9207-8i and windows 10).

you really won't benefit much from any upgrade of the HBA; unless you're doing really high IOPS on HDDs; which would seem like not the best match.

Of course you can also choose to simply update the IR firmware if you wish, then you'll need that file, located in Firmware/HBA_9211_8i_IR. The IT firmware should be easy to find on your card manufacturer's download site; if not then Google it. Type these lines manually one at a time, but adding " -c 0" for the first card, " -c 1" for the second card, etc. However when I used the P5 flasher, even if I had got this message and even if "IR" appeared in the sas2flash "-list" printout, the P5 EFI flasher still crossflashed the IT firmware correctly (as verified after reboot).

That's fine because we're upgrading the card in stages and it doesn't yet have that info completely or at all. HARD DRIVE/HBA compatibility: Note that some newer hard drives with updated protocols may NOT work on previous generation cards. If the item comes direct from a manufacturer, it may be delivered in non-retail packaging, such as a plain or unprinted box or plastic bag.This post is merely a documentation on my way to success, and I provide this info in the hopes it might be useful to somebody.

If you're running a script or application, please register or sign in with your developer credentials here. There are bios and efi "roms" that provides boot-time options, and these are * separate* files independent from the "firmware" (the part that actually controls the disks and responds to the OS).The first phase of this current FreeNAS build is going to have 10 HDDs then eventually max out at 20 HDDs (chassis limitation). If you're not needing SAS3 or NVMe speeds for SSDs though, the old SAS2x08 chipsets are still more than adequate for any platter-based drives and most SSDs and play nice with EFI (as far as I'm aware anyway) - as long as those things keep on trucking and suit your use case, there's no reason not to use them. I had done it in the past with a pair of M1015s but on a non-UEFI mobo and had completely forgotten where I found instructions.

The EFI boot rom may be described as "UEFI" or "BSD" but it appears on the next line after the bios boot rom). Utilizing Two Internal X4 Sff8087 Mini-sas Connectors, The Low-profile Sas 9211-8I Is An Excellent Fit For 1u And 2u Servers. There is a useful and comprehensive list of HBA and RAID cards and their specs, from old to newest, here, sorted by the chip they use (2008, 3008 etc). I cover EFI and non-LSI (OEM) variant flashing, so that even if the recipe doesn't work, you know enough to do some debugging rather than google and try different flashing tool versions at random, and you know roughly how it needs to work and why. You have to judge it for yourself, I'm not responsible at all if your card doesn't behave as expected or anything goes wrong (even if you follow this guide).

If it does show LSI IT firmware as expected, then there isn't much else to do and you shouldn't have any problems. So after crossflashing the HBA the disks were not visible in the BIOS when I hadn't flashed the roms. Temporarily disconnect with care any other hardware or boot/data devices that might get scrambled by this, any drives you might accidentally destroy, or whatever. Comprehensive list of known/common cards, OEM variants, and the chips used/capabilities - with thanks to ServeTheHome.