SOLVED 30GB IDE disk too small for install as boot? (solved)

[zemlin]

Been fighting issues with the USB flash boot drive getting corrupted, so I figured I'd throw an old spinny disk in the box for boot. When I tried to install 9.3.1 I was able to select the 30GB disk, but the install failed with an error stating that the disk was too small. I put an 8GB SD card in a card reader on that computer and the install to the SD card went fine.

I did a bit of searching here but didn't turn up anything about IDE problems. Am I missing something?

 

[Mirfster]

Does that 30GB IDE disk have any existing partitions or was part of a RAID in its prior life? Try wiping the drive entirely first. Might want to do it on another system to be safe.

Never tried using an IDE drive, but I am not aware of it not being able to be used...

 

[zemlin]

It had a fresh single partition and was formatted NTFS, but since it would be wiped out by the install I figured that would not matter.

 

[Mirfster]

Info from FreeBSD, in case it helps (https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/compatibility-drives.html):

What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support?


FreeBSD supports EIDE, SATA, SCSI, and SAS drives (with a compatible controller; see the next section), and all drives using the original “Western Digital” interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces and clones.

 

[anodos]

Been fighting issues with the USB flash boot drive getting corrupted, so I figured I'd throw an old spinny disk in the box for boot. When I tried to install 9.3.1 I was able to select the 30GB disk, but the install failed with an error stating that the disk was too small. I put an 8GB SD card in a card reader on that computer and the install to the SD card went fine.

I did a bit of searching here but didn't turn up anything about IDE problems. Am I missing something?

IDE is pretty old. What are your full system specs?

 

[zemlin]

The system isn't that old, it's just an old disk.
Motherboard is ASUS P7P55D-E LX with 16GB RAM (DDR3 1333 PC3 10666 not ECC). i5 760 quad core CPU.

 

[Mirfster]

...(DDR3 1333 PC3 10666 not ECC)...

Just noting that someone is going to mention the non-ECC RAM and this board not being capable of supporting ECC...

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P7P55DE_LX/specifications/

 

[joeschmuck]

That is a pretty odd error stating the drive was too small when it was 30GB. The fact that it's IDE shouldn't be an issue. I would boot up something like UBCD and delete all the partitions on that drive, then try the installation again and report your results.

If you get this working, run a long smart test on that drive as well, verify it is currently a solid drive.

 

[zemlin]

Just noting that someone is going to mention the non-ECC RAM and this board not being capable of supporting ECC...

yep - not serious enough about this to replace the motherboard - at least at this point.

 

[zemlin]

Plugged the disk into a USB housing and deleted the partition with Windows Disk Management. Put the disk back into the server and tried to install to it again (install booting from a USB optical drive).

An error with FreeNAS trying to partition the disk?

 

[Mirfster]

Not saying this is the answer, but will provide the info in case others can clarify:

http://daemon-notes.com/articles/system/install-ufs

If you ever encounter "operation not permitted" error message, disable GEOM protection with the command:
sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16

These are some old threads, may assist as well:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-to-gpt-format-the-disk-ada0.3738/#post-14881
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/unable-to-create-volume.2020/

 

[zemlin]

I'm no FreeNAS wiz, just fumbling my way through. Yesterday installed the ISO to this disk at one point before I made it through the install process properly.
When I was just putting the server back online it apparently tried to boot from this disk and it went into the INSTALL boot - even though I have created and deleted partitions on it since then. I'm wiping the disk now and will try it again.

 

[zemlin]

Zeroing out the drive got past the problem. The links above (and stumbling into the install still hanging onto the disk) helped ID the issue. thanks.

 

[Mirfster]

Glad to hear things worked out.

 

[joeschmuck]

The UBCD (GParted) could have helped you out here, just keep that in the back of your mind. If you plan to work with hard drives, burn in testing (you should do for any computer you build) such as in FreeNAS, The UBCD can come in handy. Check out this link