Can a RAID card be used just to connect an optical drive?

Question

This is one of those daft "I bought some used equipment on eBay' type questions. I have an IBM xServer with a SCSI RAID running CentOS 6 and I bought this 3Ware 9500 SATA RAID card thinking I could use it to add SATA bus for a DVD upgrade to Blueray. Problem is 3Ware was bought by Avago (or whatever they do) and the LSI knowledge base is down (prolly a good time to jettison the old support).

When I start up I can get into 3Ware BIOS manager, but the Blueray doesn't show up. Really, since it's not a hard drive, is it even supposed to?

Not being much of a hardware guy, I didn't even stop to consider Can a RAID card be used just to connect an optical drive? The 3Ware user manual doesn't even cover this scenario--unthinkable!

//Updated to make the point clear the 3Ware card is SATA.

//Update2 here is the 3Ware 3DM2 CLI tools output

# tw_cli
//mrwizard> help

Copyright (c) 2009 LSI
AMCC/3ware CLI (version 2.01.09.004)

[bunch of help stuff]

//mrwizard> rescan
Rescanning controller /c0 for units and drives ...Done.
Found the following unit(s): [none].
Found the following drive(s): [none].

//mrwizard> show                                     
Ctl   Model        (V)Ports  Drives   Units   NotOpt  RRate   VRate  BBU
------------------------------------------------------------------------

c0    9500S-4LP    4         0        0       0       1       1

// Update 3: Checked connections. Switched ports on the card. Confirmed the drive has power.

Rescanning controller /c2 for units and drives ...Done.
Found the following unit(s): [none].
Found the following drive(s): [none].

Ctl   Model        (V)Ports  Drives   Units   NotOpt  RRate   VRate  BBU
------------------------------------------------------------------------
c2    9500S-4LP    4         0        0       0       1       1

// UPDATE 4, As long as this is an eBay related post, I might as well show the goods: Same product, different seller: Lite-On iHBS112 Blu Ray Disc Burner/DVD+RW DL Internal Desktop PC SATA Drive ($49) Same seller: 3Ware 9500S-4LP 4Port SATA PCIx RAID Controller 128MB with Cables ($15)

Oh, you have a SCSI raid card and a SATA drive? No, that's not going to work. — EEAA, Nov 07 '15 at 20:15
Is that for this particular 3Ware card or PCI raid cards in general? — xtian, Nov 07 '15 at 20:22
SCSI and SATA are two different protocols. One is parallel, one is serial. You'll either need a different card or different optical drive. — EEAA, Nov 07 '15 at 20:26
Sorry. It wasn't very clear in the OP that the 3ware card is SATA. I fixed this above. — xtian, Nov 07 '15 at 20:43

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 08 '15 at 03:34

2

Some RAID cards can connect non-disk devices, but the 9500 does not support removable media devices. The 9500 has two completely separate interfaces, one to its disk and one to the host. The host interface provides only disk-like devices. It has no ability to provide a different interface to the host.

answered Nov 08 '15 at 03:34

David Schwartz

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Bonus kudos--how can I tell the difference between a card which supports optical drives and one which does not? Is there a terminology distinction? – xtian Nov 10 '15 at 22:30
@xtian Unfortunately, it can be pretty hard to tell. Most "real" RAID cards that do actual hardware RAID cannot support non-RAIDable devices. Most "fake" RAID cards that are basically just regular controllers can. – David Schwartz Nov 10 '15 at 22:32

Can a RAID card be used just to connect an optical drive?

1 Answers1