SOLVED BTX Loader Hang (Freenas won't boot) with FOUR sata drives connected

[n8lbv]

I have a simple test Freenas box that oddly will not boot when I hook up the 4th SATA drive to the motherboard.
Please see attached photo:
The OS is installed on a good USB thumb drive (no problems here).

Everything works great and no problems until I try to hook up the 4th SATA drive to the motherboard.
At boot time BTX Loader shows 5 drives (probably includes the USB stick) as seen in the photo and then just freezes and hangs forever (waited over an hour to make sure it was frozen.
I think I have tried ALL the obvious things to try before posting this.
BIOS sees all 4 SATA drives fine.
I have set BIOS to only boot from USB.
Tried different drives, during this process also made sure they were truly blank/wiped not bootable etc. Makes no difference.
I can remove ANY of the drives (leaving 3 drives) and it boots up fine.
I doesn't matter what ports have a drive on them or what is on the drive or what drives are connected (tried different drives).

ANY 3 drives on any of the 4 ports WORKS.
ANY 4 drives (all ports populated) does not work. *tried different drives* tried blank drives and non-blank drives*
Verified it's NOT the power or SATA cables.

Box Particulars:

Dell Optiplex 390 *Latest Motherboard Firmware installed.
Service TAG: 8TX38V1
CPU Gen2 i5
RAM 16GB DDR3
Using built on motherboard Intel SATA ports
FreeNAS-11.2-U5
Installed/Configured for BIOS boot NOT UEFI

 

[n8lbv]

One test I had not yet tried is to USB boot a Windows10 USB install media or Windows PE or other Bootable USB with four SATA
drives attached to see if there is any problem outside of Freenas/ USB boot issue I am seeing.
As well as just trying the Freenas install USB media to see if I get the same or similar freeze.
Something I will try next. That should rule out some stuff.

I'd like to be able to use that 4th drive port!
:)

 

[Chris Moore]

Dell Optiplex 390

If you have the Mini Tower model, it should have a 265 watt power supply, which is right on the edge of being enough for four drives, but those systems are around six years old (or more) and it is entirely possible that the power supply just can't put enough power out any more. Old age.
My first thought, you might need a new / more powerful power supply.

 

[n8lbv]

Easy enough to test.
I can power some or all of the drives on a good external supply.
Or just flat out try a bigger supply on the system.

 

[n8lbv]

Could also plug 4 little SSDs.

 

[n8lbv]

@Chris Moore
I've determined it's not a power issue
Tried powering all 4 drives on external power supply.
Tried larger supply on computer.
Tried 4 small 128GB SSDs.
Same exact issue persists.

Any combination of 3 drives works perfect.
Any combination of any 4 drives and you get the boot hang in the photo.

 

[n8lbv]

Freenas boot USB install media (same as is installed FreeNAS-11.2-U5 )
works fine and does not hang with all 4 disks connected.

From shell:
geom list disk sees all 4 drives and their details ada0 ada1 ada2 and ada3 as well as the USB stick da0

 

[n8lbv]

Since the Install media seems to see everything (all 4 drives)
I should probably attempt a clean install and see if all works.
Then restore config from backup and see if it breaks.

 

[n8lbv]

Probably try the reset to default config first then the clean install.

 

[n8lbv]

Reset configuration from the GUI did not make it bootable.
Problem persists.
Trying fresh install.
Fresh install where it asks which drive to install OS to sees all 4 drives + (the available for install USB stick) properly.

 

[n8lbv]

Fresh install won't boot with 4 drives connected.
No different than before.

 

[TAC]

Steve, sounds like your solution might be a new MoBo. :-/

 

[n8lbv]

Yes, if this were a customer or production scenario that would have been replaced a day ago!
I'm trying to get my head around why is it not working though and also create a useful record of what is happening
if it might help anyone else and if there is a fix.

 

[n8lbv]

Update:
Installed OS on SSD instead of USB.
Now all 4 ports work fine.
But...
I lose a SATA port :(
That's no fun but was informative.

So I only have the problem when booting the OS from USB.
And not at all during install.
It shows up after fresh install and first boot attempt.

 

[erick vogeler]

i was looking into this also. Problem is with Dells only or seems to be. Had the same exact problem. 4th drive connected i would get stock on the exact same screen. It seems on AHCI dell bios disables port 4 (although it shows). Switch it to RAID (no need to setup just have them all non members) and watch freenas boot with 4 hard drives connected with USB.

Images below:

 

[Nasest]

i was looking into this also. Problem is with Dells only or seems to be. Had the same exact problem. 4th drive connected i would get stock on the exact same screen. It seems on AHCI dell bios disables port 4 (although it shows). Switch it to RAID (no need to setup just have them all non members) and watch freenas boot with 4 hard drives connected with USB.

Just registered here to say big thx to you, this probably saved me a lot of hours finding the bug. Maybe I would have given up my tries with that system.

Had the same issue on an DELL Poweredge T310, old but perfect for a NAS. Installed TrueNAS w/o any drives, which worked seamlessly, and after connecting all 6 HDDs no boot. It froze right before displaying the drive list (at the small rotating dashes/slashes which stopped rotating).