An administrator has attached an old SCSI JBOD to a server to recover archival data. However, the array will not mount to the server. Which of the following should the administrator check FIRST?

While SCSI bus termination is important for signal integrity, it is a hardware-level check that should follow confirming the OS can even detect the device via installed drivers.

Without the correct SCSI host bus adapter (HBA) or disk drivers installed on the server, the operating system has no means to enumerate, communicate with, or mount the JBOD array. Driver verification is the foundational first step in hardware troubleshooting because all other checks are irrelevant if the OS cannot see the device.

Updating the SCSI BIOS is a corrective action that may be needed in edge cases, but it is not the first diagnostic step and is less likely to be the root cause than missing drivers.

In SCSI architecture, terminators are placed at the physical ends of the bus chain - not on each individual drive; installing terminators on every drive would actually disrupt bus signaling.