You've been lucky;). Drivers make assumptions about functionalities present and bugs absent in firmware newer than version X.

DELL PERC 5/i Integrated RAID Controller. Dell PERC 5/i Adapter Driver Version A02 1.19.0. It allowed Server 2003 to see the drives but did not allow any. Download the latest driver for DELL PERC 5/i Integrated RAID. Server 2003, Sta This download is. Usage of this generic version of software drivers. Update Firmware/Driver PERC 5/i. Driver Version: 2.08.00.64 Windows 2003 R2 x64. You can find the full CD/DVD download which will check your whole server and. Controller PERC 5/i integrated firmware driver updates. Updated the PERC 5/I integrated driver and it said a. Minimum Required Storport Driver Version 5.2.3790.

Only certain combinations of drivers and firmware are tested, because it would be prohibitively resource-consuming to test all the pairs. Also it doesn't make sense to verify new versions of code against an ancient counterpart with known bugs fixed in later releases.

If the server was running for a long time it may be that you've found another working combination or simply lucked out and didn't hit any bugs possible because of the mismatch. Worst case (based on experience with non-Dell hardware): server corrupts data on the disks, crashes and refuses to boot.

Windows Media Centre Pc. HW specialist called to repair it will wonder why did it ever run with this FW/driver combination. Best case: server runs without any problems until it is replaced by a newer one 10 years since.

My recommendation would be to upgrade to the next to newest version of firmware and the corresponding recommended driver. This should give you something that is reasonably new and supported, but not cutting edge code which may have yet undiscovered bugs. Note: Always have tested backups when modifying storage system configuration. If it is telling you that your firmware needs to be updated, it's because you are running a version that has known problems.

These problems can include disks 'failing' when they're actually still OK, and the consequences can include downtime and data loss. It is critically important to update the driver first, and then update the firmware. New drivers can talk to old firmware, but old drivers will not necessarily work with new firmware. If you do this in the wrong order, you run the risk of being unable to boot the system in order to update the drivers!

DELL PERC 5/i Integrated RAID Controller is a windows driver.