Did I buy junk HDDs? or did I mess something up in expanding my pool?

[TrashBox]

Good afternoon everyone. I'm running TrueNAS-SCALE-22.12.4.2. I recently tried expanding my pool with a few hard drives and now I'm getting sluggish performance when going into the storage tab on the dashboard and Plex will hang up and not deploy. I do get some errors at start up as seen in the screen shot but then when I go into disk health or details I'm not seeing any errors. I had to buy an IOCrest 4 port SATA card SI-PEX40064. for extra sata ports. I'm wondering if that card could be causing the issues, or if I bought some junk drives. I have 3 drives on that card a 6tb seagate ST6000DM003-2U9186. and 2 8tb seagate ST8000NC0002-1XX112. If you have any questions or anything I could try before disassembling and returning those drives I'm all ears.

 

[artlessknave]

IOCrest 4 port SATA card SI-PEX40064

these are universally absolute garbage and ewaste. literally throw it in the garbage (or return it to the scammer who sold it if possible) and get an HBA from the recomended hardware guids from ebay for around the same price. they support typically 8 drives or up to 256 drives using expanders

these cards cheap out in every way possible, and often do stupid things like access connected drives sequentially, which will kill your performance , zfs will hate it, and you will hate your nas.

 

[HoneyBadger]

ST6000DM003
anything I could try before disassembling and returning those drives I'm all ears

These are Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives, so regardless of the situation they should be returned and replaced with drives that aren't SMR. Unfortunately if they are already part of your pool the ability to remove them (as opposed to having to recreate your pool) will depend on your vdev topology.

Can you show us the pool design/vdev layout from the Manage Devices screen? If the pool is made up of only mirrors then removal should hopefully be possible.

 

[artlessknave]

These are Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives

oh dear that will make the experience even worse.

 

[TrashBox]

oof, so that 6tb seagate is a SMR drive I should replace with another ST8000NC0002? and for an expansion card something like https://www.amazon.com/9201-8i-Controller-9211-8i-Expander-SFF-8087/dp/B0BVTJPZSG/ should work?

 

[PhilD13]

CMR and SMR Hard Drives | Seagate US

See the list of recording technology utilized on our internal hard drives

www.seagate.com

 

[artlessknave]

I do not like the look of the card on that amazon link. it looks too close to similar to the counterfeit ones. LSI cards usually have LSI on them, for example.
unfortunately, there are counterfits to deal with as well, because apparently ewaste storage is big business...somewhere.
you have the right idea though.

 

[PhilD13]

I have bought cards from the vendor below before. He has really good stuff. Every card is inspected for broken or missing surface mount components, is properly flashed for use with Truenas, fully tested and and stands behind what he sells. He will also answer questions and advise what works best together or what cables will or will not work and why. With so much garbage out there it is nice to be able to trust a vendor sells what he says it is.

Security Measure

www.ebay.com

 

[TrashBox]

So, this should work? https://www.ebay.com/itm/1658920524...G657S3&hash=item269fefd5c5:g:vtQAAOSwTqFjxzn7
I hate to keep bothering you but I'd need cables for this. Would any mini sas to sata cable work or should there be certain things to look for? I was thinking of going with https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B018YHS8BS?

 

[Apollo]

Every card is inspected for broken or missing surface mount components

Not remotely possible. Failed MLCC's won't show any physical damage but can act as short.
How can someone claim to visually inspect a NVME SSD with the label on.
Is it remotely possible to achieve 100% positive feedback with 28K item sold? Not statistically possible.
just my 2 grains of salt (NaCl or otherwise)

 

[artlessknave]

he also has youtube videos on things like the different cards, ways to tell fake cards, etc. and the cards are updated to the latest IT firmware he can as well. its not a big thing but for those who are new it can be helpful.

Not remotely possible. Failed MLCC's won't show any physical damage but can act as short.

you can still inspect it. just because you didnt find something does NOT mean you didnt try. making even the effort is still valuable. if there is a short it will be found when testing it. y'know, the part that comes with the visual inspection, and the updates? it literally get plugged in. if there was a short it would be kind of obvious when it doesnt work or lights majestically on fire.

How can someone claim to visually inspect a NVME SSD with the label on.

you dont need to remove a label to "visually inspect" anything. you can inspect if the label was removed; if it wasnt, there is a pretty good chance the label wasnt removed....
if the label is intact that usually, not always but usually, a resonably reliable indicator that damage is not likely to have occured.

Is it remotely possible to achieve 100% positive feedback with 28K item sold? Not statistically possible.

statistically implausible things statistically happen all the time. you sound like the anime characters that say "thats impossible" to something they literally just saw happen in front of them, clearly showing that it is, in fact, quite possible.

just my 2 grains of salt (NaCl or otherwise)

seems more like a grain of tin and another of foil.

 

[Apollo]

he also has youtube videos on things like the different cards, ways to tell fake cards, etc. and the cards are updated to the latest IT firmware he can as well. its not a big thing but for those who are new it can be helpful.

you can still inspect it. just because you didnt find something does NOT mean you didnt try. making even the effort is still valuable. if there is a short it will be found when testing it. y'know, the part that comes with the visual inspection, and the updates? it literally get plugged in. if there was a short it would be kind of obvious when it doesnt work or lights majestically on fire.

you dont need to remove a label to "visually inspect" anything. you can inspect if the label was removed; if it wasnt, there is a pretty good chance the label wasnt removed....
if the label is intact that usually, not always but usually, a resonably reliable indicator that damage is not likely to have occured.

statistically implausible things statistically happen all the time. you sound like the anime characters that say "thats impossible" to something they literally just saw happen in front of them, clearly showing that it is, in fact, quite possible.

seems more like a grain of tin and another of foil.

Seriously?

 

[TrashBox]

ok, those cables would work right?

 

[artlessknave]

the cables look right and its definitely the right type of card.
the "B stock" is new, I don't remember him having that, but he states in the description that they pass his testing so *shrugs*
I dont see anything in the pictures that looks like a repair so im not sure what makes it "b-stock"

 

[joeschmuck]

So, this should work? https://www.ebay.com/itm/1658920524...G657S3&hash=item269fefd5c5:g:vtQAAOSwTqFjxzn7
I hate to keep bothering you but I'd need cables for this. Would any mini sas to sata cable work or should there be certain things to look for? I was thinking of going with https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B018YHS8BS?

That is the correct connector SFF-8087.

 

[TrashBox]

Great thanks guys, i'll get it ordered up. So would I be able to swap those pci cards and plug in the 3 same HDDS and truenas will know they're the same drives or would I have to rebuild the Vdev they're on, and wreck my pool?

 

[Etorix]

Swap cards, plug in drives, plug in the replacement drive for the SMR one, replace said SMR drive. Done.

 

[artlessknave]

So would I be able to swap those pci cards and plug in the 3 same HDDS

as long as they were not adding anything to the drives, yes. zfs stores everything it need on the drives themselves (in multiple places), so as long as the drives are available it will just work. this is really nice cuz your whole system could die and all you have to do is move the drives and import the pool.

where this doesnt work is typically when trying to make a fraken-pool using raid cards and raid0 modes. cards like the HP smartarray series put their own bits on the card, making them only readable by other smartarray cards.

 

[TrashBox]

got it, thanks guys.