All disks from previous pool stopped spinning after reinstall on different mobo

[mitzaotomitza]

Hello to everyone,

All my disks that Iused in a previous pool are not spinning nor recognized when used in a new fresh install of truenas core

TrueNAS 13.0-U6.1​

Short story: I installed Truenas core on an old mobo with 8GB of ram just for testing and getting familiar with the settings. I managed to build a zfs1 pool with four different disks and two ssd, boot and cache. Everything worked fine and decided to to start fresh with a better mobo and 64GB of ram.
I pulled all the disks from the old system ( without destroying the pool). I moved all the disks to the new mobo and freshly installed TruNas 13 on the same ssd and everything is back, up and running. The problem is that when I attach the spinning disks the mobo shuts off and reboots. None of the disks are spinning nor recognized under disks or when trying to form a pool.
I tried to attached them to my main Win11 pro PC to format them. The PC shuts off ass soon as I attach the power ( hotswap enabled in bios).
If I attach any of the former TrueNas drives while PC is off, it will not boot at all.
I tried external USB HDD dock to connect and format to main PC. Disks are not spinning.

The actual TrueNas configuration:
TrueNas Core 13
Mobo: Asus Rampage Black Edition IV Bios 081 x64 RGE1-X79B-0210
CPU: Intel i7-4960x 3.60GHz
Memory: Gskill DDR3 64gb F3-2400C10-8GTX
SSD Boot: Samsung Evo 830 128GB
SSD Cache: Samsung Evo 860 1Tb
HDD: 4 Spinning disks (Seagate / WD mix)
GPU: Nvidia GTX 660ti
PSU: Asus Thor 1200W

In the motherboard I have the hotswap - enabled, all ovecloking features - disabled, intel and asmedia controllers- enabled.
With this being said none of the drives from the previous pool on the old machine are not spinning at all. One thing that might point to the issue, is that I did not destroyed the pool , from previous machine, when I moved the spinning disks. The two SSDs I could format and they are recognized on the Asus Black edition IV on which I later installed.
Question: why any of the spinning drives are not working/spinning?
How can I format them and get them back to the new pool of newly installed TrueNas 13?
Once again, when I hotplug these disks the PC shuts down like it is a short or something like that.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you in advance!

 

[sretalla]

when I hotplug these disks the PC shuts down like it is a short or something like that

Sounds to me like your SATA controller doesn't support hot-plug... stop doing that.

If you want to work with a controller like that, changing out disks requires a full shutdown, then removing/replacing the disk(s).

 

[mitzaotomitza]

Thank you sretalla for the input!
When I have the spinning hard drives connected to the turned off motherboard, the system shuts off as soon as I press the Start button.
My motherboard "Asus Rampage Black IV" supports hot swap and it is enabled. If I connect a HDD, while running, it shuts off instantly.
None of my hard drives from previous system are spinning anymore. Sooo confused

 

[mitzaotomitza]

Just plugged in a new WD 1TB drive and it was recognized immediately. All other drives that were part of a ZFS1 pool are unresponsive after moving them to a newly installed TrueNas Core.. Any Idea?

 

[sretalla]

Having ZFS "formatting" (really just a GPT with a designation for the second partition as ZFS) doesn't (and I don't see how it could) render a drive unable to spin up.

I understand that this doesn't match with your experience, and I'm not trying to gaslight you, but rather hoping you can think a bit harder about what's going on (that I can't see, since I'm not in front of it) which may be the true cause.

 

[NugentS]

I was thinking power - but thats a 1200W PSU with 4 HDD's
Are you powering all 4 HDD's off a single SATA power port with doublers?

Can you see the drives in the system BIOS?

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I was thinking power - but thats a 1200W PSU with 4 HDD's
Are you powering all 4 HDD's off a single SATA power port with doublers?

Can you see the drives in the system BIOS?

I tried new psu sata lines as well. Tried almost anything, including connecting the usb 3 dock to my imac. No spinning,, drives are acting like they are dead.

 

[mitzaotomitza]

Having ZFS "formatting" (really just a GPT with a designation for the second partition as ZFS) doesn't (and I don't see how it could) render a drive unable to spin up.

I understand that this doesn't match with your experience, and I'm not trying to gaslight you, but rather hoping you can think a bit harder about what's going on (that I can't see, since I'm not in front of it) which may be the true cause.

I exhausted all the possibilities and scenarios. The last hope is to connect the drives to a linux system ( I don’t have) . Maybe that will break the spell.
About seeing my setup, it is a mess

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I was thinking power - but thats a 1200W PSU with 4 HDD's
Are you powering all 4 HDD's off a single SATA power port with doublers?

Can you see the drives in the system BIOS?

Drives are not showing in the bios. No spinning at all.

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I was thinking power - but thats a 1200W PSU with 4 HDD's
Are you powering all 4 HDD's off a single SATA power port with doublers?

Can you see the drives in the system BIOS?

No drives in the Bios. If I have the drives plugged in, while system off, when I press start button I hear a click ON and a click OFFf from PSU. Pc won’t start.
When I try to hot-plug the system shuts off instantly.
The drives are acting like dead or like having some previous ZFS protection from the previous pool. I really don’t think that all drives from previous pool are fried.

 

[sretalla]

I can't really get a handle on where the drives are (except the disconnected WD Blue drive you have in the front there)...

Knowing at least this, I have 2 suggestions:

1. the drives are in a part of the "case"(?) which isn't getting sufficient airflow and have overheated at some point (or all the time) and are now dead due to some component burnout.

2. the drives are not NAS drives, so have not survived being run on ZFS as long as they were (I had a bunch of WD greens burn out on me in the early days when i thought all disks were the same)... the head-parking behavior that those drives try to do (without intervention from the wdidle utility) is likely to kill them in a few months of operation.

If you can't even get them in the BIOS, they aren't disks anymore, just paperweights.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Sudden power-off implies a hardware short. Looking at your photos, your motherboard appears to be physically resting on a metal object?

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I can't really get a handle on where the drives are (except the disconnected WD Blue drive you have in the front there)...

Knowing at least this, I have 2 suggestions:

1. the drives are in a part of the "case"(?) which isn't getting sufficient airflow and have overheated at some point (or all the time) and are now dead due to some component burnout.

2. the drives are not NAS drives, so have not survived being run on ZFS as long as they were (I had a bunch of WD greens burn out on me in the early days when i thought all disks were the same)... the head-parking behavior that those drives try to do (without intervention from the wdidle utility) is likely to kill them in a few months of operation.

If you can't even get them in the BIOS, they aren't disks anymore, just paperweights.

First, thank you for all the great suggestions!
1. Even though it is not clear from the picture, all the hardware sits on top of a glass surface. Free airflow at room temperature ( -16 Celsius).
No risk of overheating.
2. I know that all the drives used are not NAS drives. I just grabbed whatever I had around to test and learn about TrueNas Core and they worked perfectly on the old build. When I unplugged the drives from the old build and installed in the new system, they stopped working ( sata drives are fine).
At this point the only blame I can point out, is the office electrical outlet.
I will post updates as soon as I ll move the setup in a different place.
Running out of ideas.

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I’ve seen some posts about isolating the 3.3v pins on the drives. Instead I just cut the the fifth wire that is supplying the 3.3v . Same issue, drives are not spinning.

 

[oxyde]

Hi, have u tried to use some sata-USB adaptor for plug the disk?

 

[mitzaotomitza]

I plugged each drive in a usb sata dock. None are spinning. At this point I suspect that Asus RBEIV might have some sata issues.
Anyway, I still believe that all drives from the Truenas are fried.

 

[NugentS]

Looks like it. The problem now is working out why - preferably without frying another bunch of drives

 

[mitzaotomitza]

Looks like it. The problem now is working out why - preferably without frying another bunch of drives

At this point I think is the Asus Rampage Black Edition IV which wants to retire.
Once I’ll get to the bottom oft his I will report.

 

[joeschmuck]

I’ve seen some posts about isolating the 3.3v pins on the drives. Instead I just cut the the fifth wire that is supplying the 3.3v . Same issue, drives are not spinning.

I don't think that is your issue, at first I thought it until you said the power supply powers on momentarily and then off. As @HoneyBadger said, sounds like an electrical short.

I do not like Hot-Swap as I have seen a drive short out while being installed into a Supermicro system that came with hot-swap carriages. Scared the shit out of me. Thankfully only the drive and drive bay were destroyed, not the rest of the system.

I need some clarity:
1) Without any drives connected to power, the power supply will power on and remain on? With the drives the power supply turns right off?
I assume this is what you are saying. I'm asking so I'm perfectly clear.

Now do the following steps.
2) Carefully inspect the the SATA power connection on the back of each drive, look for burn marks, melted plastic, etc. Also examine the power supply SATA power connectors for the same thing. Have some good light to see everything clearly. You could solve your problem right here.

3) If you do not see any electrical damage, with power OFF, if you connect ANY of the four drives (not all the drives, not two drives, just a single drive) to the SATA Power Connector ONLY, leave the data cable disconnected, and try to power the computer ON, does the power supply remain on or does it turn right back off? Do this for each drive. If the power supply stays on for some drives, those are likely good. If the power supply turns right back off, the drive may not be good, just sit it to the side.

Let's say none of your drives let the power supply remain on, Do you have a different hard drive that you could use just to see if it will power on?
If the drive will power on, I suspect your original drives were somehow damaged.

Let's say all your drives power up and the power supply says on. The issue now would look like the SATA Data Cable, the HBA, or something like that. I hope for that outcome.

If the HBA is suspect, plug the darn thing directly into the motherboard slot, see if that fixes it. It could be the cable you have has a problem.

And if you also suspect the HBA or SATA data connection, just plug the data connection into the motherboard directly and remove the HBA card. I don't know if your motherboard has enough SATA ports but if it does, maybe that will make things work again.

Perform my steps slowly, take your time, do not do this if you are tired, get some sleep first. If you do not understand what I'm asking you to do, ask me to clarify.

And to be honest, I don't like troubleshooting an electrical problem this way. If you knew how to use a multimeter then you could do other things but that is much more difficult to tell someone what to do over a few messages. Lets hope you find something in step 2 above. A visual observation makes things quicker.

Report back what happens.

EDIT: Next time I will add to verify you are not using the wrong modular power supply cables.

 

[oxyde]

After have try everything has been advised below... Maybe u could give a try to find some "fried" diode on the disks pcb with a multimeter.
There are a lot of video on YT where the test are explained (some better than other), the replace can be hard if u don have experience but the troubleshooting must be doable!