I am having a problem initializing the drives for my RAID array. I deleted the old array which was 4x 500mb mirrored with one hot spare, and now if I go to the Initialize Drives section of the controller utility the drives are all listed but grayed-out and can't be selected to initialize. The Create Array part of the menu says I have to initialize the drives in order to make the array though! This is infuriating. Doing web searches on this has been frustratingly ineffective. I get hundreds of links that have nothing to do with my problem no matter what search engine I use and only one or two that actually do but no solutions that make sense to me. I would appreciate any help available.
These are 500GB Hitachi SATA-3 drives on an Adaptec 5405Z with 512MB, all running on a Xeon E5620 with 12gb DDR3. I really want to get the OS on this thing and get my video card in there but this is really holding up my efforts

Introduction¶

Key RAID Features - Supports 4 (5405Z) or 8 (5805Z) direct-attached or up to 256 SATA or SAS disk drives using SAS expanders - RAID levels 0, 1, 1E, 5, 5EE, 6, 10, 50 and 60 - Quick initialization - Online Capacity Expansion - Copyback Hot Spare - Dynamic caching algorithm - Native Command Queuing (NCQ) - Background initialization - Hot-plug. Adaptec - Adaptec RAID 5405Z Adaptec RAID 5405Z 4 internal port, low profile, PCI-Express (PCIe) Unified Serial RAID controller with Zero-Maintenance Cache Protection delivers exceptional performance, Intelligent Power Management, advanced data protection, and maximum scalability for enterprise-class, high-density server applications. Adaptec RAID 5405 » Adaptec RAID 5405Z » Adaptec RAID 5445 » Adaptec RAID 5445Z » Adaptec RAID 5805 » Adaptec RAID 5805Z » Adaptec RAID 5085 » Adaptec RAID 51245 » Adaptec RAID 51645 » Adaptec RAID 52445 » Adaptec RAID 3405 » Adaptec RAID 3085 » Adaptec RAID 3805 » Adaptec RAID 31205 » Adaptec RAID 31605 » Adaptec RAID 2405. Adaptec Unified Serial SAS/SATA 3 Gb: Adaptec RAID 5085 » Adaptec RAID 5405 » Adaptec RAID 5405Z » Adaptec RAID 5445 » Adaptec RAID 5445Z » Adaptec RAID 5805 » Adaptec RAID 5805Q » Adaptec RAID 5805Z » Adaptec RAID 5805ZQ » Adaptec RAID 51245 » Adaptec RAID 51645 » Adaptec RAID 52445 ». The Adaptec Raid 5405z Utilizes Industry-leading Dual Core Raid On Chip (roc), 512mb Ddr2 Cache, And Connectivity With The Latest X8 Pci-express To Deliver Over 250,000 I/os 1.2gbs. Using Sas Expanders, It Can Connect Up To 256 Sata/sas Devices.

The aacraid driver adds support for Adaptec (http://www.adaptec.com)RAID controllers. This is a major rewrite from the originalAdaptec supplied driver. It has significantly cleaned up both the codeand the running binary size (the module is less than half the size ofthe original).

Supported Cards/Chipsets¶

People¶

Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>

Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>

• updates for new-style PCI probing and SCSI host registration,small cleanups/fixes

Matt Domsch <matt_domsch@dell.com>

• revision ioctl, adapter messages

Deanna Bonds

• non-DASD support, PAE fibs and 64 bit, added new adaptec controllersadded new ioctls, changed scsi interface to use new error handler,increased the number of fibs and outstanding commands to a container
• fixed 64bit and 64G memory model, changed confusing naming conventionwhere fibs that go to the hardware are consistently called hw_fibs andnot just fibs like the name of the driver tracking structure

Mark Salyzyn <Mark_Salyzyn@adaptec.com>

• Fixed panic issues and added some new product ids for upcoming hbas.
• Performance tuning, card failover and bug mitigations.

Achim Leubner <Achim_Leubner@adaptec.com>

• Original Driver

Adaptec Unix OEM Product Group

Mailing List¶

linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org (Interested parties troll here)Also note this is very different to Brian’s original driverso don’t expect him to support it.

Adaptec does support this driver. Contact Adaptec tech support oraacraid@adaptec.com

Adaptec Raid 5405 Driver

Original by Brian Boerner February 2001

Drivers Adaptec RAID 5405z

Rewritten by Alan Cox, November 2001