Question Need help Cross flashing eeprom of a 9361-8i

mac_angel

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[Moderator edit to break up a solid paragraph of text.]

*** This is for HOME USE. Very, very limited budget, so please don’t suggest things that are thousands of dollars. I am working with what I have available.

Windows 11 Pro machine

Looking for help to see if I can cross flash the eeprom of a Sun Oracle MegaRAID 9361-8i to LSI or something.
I have two of the cards, one running RAID 5, the other RAID 6 (the important one). This is the only help I am looking for, not opinions or questions about why I'm using RAID. Not being rude, just trying to keep it simple.


I have a couple of 9260-8i and a 9266-8i from before. Before, I was able to have a RAID (5 or 6) and buy a new matching hard drive and add it to the existing array without having to rebuild a new RAID or anything. It took a couple of days, but the RAID was still accessable during the whole time.

I got the new RAID cards with the same idea in mind - to add another hard drive later on when I could afford it. The RAID 6 has five Seagate SkyHawk AI 20TB drives in it. It got full (it runs my Plex server with all my movies digitized in REMUX).

I picked up a new drive, went to add it, and it won’t let me. Through talking with LSI tech support, they told me it’s an OEM model by Sun Oracle, who are known to cut out regular functionality.

So, now I’m stuck trying to figure out how to move forward. My cousin suggested I might be able to cross flash the eeprom to get that functionality back. Slightly worried about if it would be able to work with the foreign configuration, but I’m hoping same chip, it should work.

No, I do not have any way of backing anything up. It’s for home use, so a tape drive would be a lot of money for something I’d rarely use (and shouldn’t need if this card did what I wanted)

Other idea is to try and back up as much as possible to the other RAID, take the new 20TB, and take two off of the RAID 6, create a new RAID 5, move the rest of the files over from the RAID 6, and when that’s done, add the drives from the RAID 6 one at a time.

Very, very risky, and I don’t even know if the Sun Oracle card lets me add to RAID 5, too. So, side note to that one would be to possibly buy another RAID card, one that does support adding to arrays, and do the same thing, building the new array with the new RAID card, etc. But, as I said, huge risk taking two drives off of the RAID 6 to proceed.

I forgot to add, the possibility of getting another RAID card, a 9361 or newer, and trying to import the foreign configuration and going up from there, too. Again, really risky.
 
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mac_angel

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Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Also: why RAID (of any sort)?

What is driving the requirement to use RAID?
Windows 11 Pro machine. Not sure why the system specs would be relevant when it's a hardware RAID card. Core i9 10940X OS off of an m.2, software RAID Strip for torrents, another m.2 for other backup. The RAID 5 had six 8TB Seagate HDD, five in RAID 5, one Universal hot spare. The other card has RAID 6 with five Seagate SkyHawk AI 20TB drive. Plus the one I just bought that I'm not able to add, which is why I'm looking for help. Brand name LSI/Avago/Broadcom cards, and some other OEMs can do Online Capacity Expansion, but not Sun Oracle, which I didn't know when I bought it.
Driving requirement to use RAID? Because I want to and not interested in other uses. All my stuff is on these RAIDs and I'm trying to keep it.
 

Ralston18

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System specs are relevant because all hardware devices and software applications have specific requirements with respect to being fully functional.

Even RAID cards.

As I understand your described RAID environment there are about 19 drives involved.

If by "trying to keep it" [ it = your stuff] you mean backing up data then RAID (any level) is a very complicated configuration for doing so.

And there are far simpler ways to back up data with the caveat being that you do not have some other underlying requirement that only a RAID configuration can support.

All I can suggest, at this time, is for you to post some diagram or image of the current RAID environment along with a corresponding diagram or image of what the next propsed or required RAID environment is to be per your posts.

I.e., first the 'now" and second" where you want to be".

Cross-flashing EEProms etc. is well beyond any resonable efforts to "keep stuff" AKA backup data.

Out of my comfort zone now and will defer to members with far more experience with RAID and storage.