I recently re-experienced a problem with a RAID controller that was extremely frustrating. The most frustrating part was not remembering what the resolution was so I am posting this to help me remember.

RAID Controller BIOS Version 2.07.00 (Build March 31, 2009)
?A -0 (Bus 6 Dev 0) Intel(R) RAID Controller SROMBSASMR
FW package: 11.0.1-0051

Number of devices exceeded the maximum limit of devices per quad
Please remove the extra drives and reboot system to avoid losing data
System has halted due to unsupported configuration.

If you contact Intel Technical Support, then will insist that the problem is a the backplane firmware or even a defective backplane or the same for the RAID controller. If you have the current firmware and you are fairly certain that the backplane is not defective, AND IF YOU HAVE A CURRENT RESTORABLE BACKUP, then you might consider the following operation to help determine if a defective hard disk is causing the problem.

The cause of this error message was due to a hard disk drive malfunctioning. The drive causing the problem was a Seagate ST31000340NS with a firmware marking of SN16. Once the single defective physical disk was removed, the controller will allow access the RAID BIOS Console.

An orange light was present on the drive slot indicating a failure, but it doesn't usually require removal to access the RAID BIOS Console.