How to flash an H200i/LSI card to HBA IT mode

You will need another (older is prefered) machine to flash this card. I then used this card in the storage slot of a Dell R710. If you have one then the below guide should work. This guide is more of an overview of the steps to follow. If you need a more detailed explanation I would suggest reading TechMattr’s guide first.

Run Rufus and select your USB drive as the device then select “FreeDOS” under boot selection, leave everything else as it is and then hit Start.

I downloaded the files from Techmattr’s guide and added the H200I firmware from Dell’s website. You can do that yourself or use the attached files here

Download the files here

Copy the files from the LSI-911-8i.zip onto the USB stick overwriting any files it prompts.

Put the card in a different machine as flashing won’t work in the R710

Boot into the USB and you should be presented with FreeDOS

From FreeDOS:

sas2flsh.exe -c 0 -list (This will give you the cards SAS address, Make sure you write it down somewhere as you cannot recover this)

If you run this command and get “ERROR: Failed to initialize PAL. Exiting program.” you will need to run flash using a UEFI shell. As I didn’t need this I suggest you follow techmattr’s guide but substitute the firmware and bin files with the ones shown below.

Run the following commands:

• megarec .exe -readsbr 0 backup.sbr
• megarec .exe -writesbr 0 sbrempty.bin
• megarec .exe -cleanflash 0
• Reboot
• sas2flsh.exe -o -f H200I.FW
• Reboot
• sas2flsh.exe -o -f 2118p7.bin
• Reboot
• s2fp19.exe -o -f 2118it.bin
• Reboot
• s2fp19.exe -o -sasadd 5xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Substitute the xx’s with your cards SAS address)

Put the card back in your R710 and it should now be in HBA mode.