Drives not detected by BIOS

[Phe0nix]

type "terminal" in the ubuntu searchbar, then you'll get a terminal.

This should be simple. Opened the terminal and ran the command and got :

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda ( Is the prompt correct as it says root in FreeNAS )

dd: failed to open '/dev/sda1' :permission denied

 

[pirateghost]

This should be simple. Opened the terminal and ran the command and got :

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda ( Is the prompt correct as it says root in FreeNAS )

dd: failed to open '/dev/sda1' [emoji14]ermission denied

You need 'sudo dd if=/dev/zero


Add sudo in front of the commands. When booted to Ubuntu you are not root. You have to use sudo to elevate privs

 

[Phe0nix]

You need 'sudo dd if=/dev/zero


Add sudo in front of the commands. When booted to Ubuntu you are not root. You have to use sudo to elevate privs

Guess i did it correctly then. I did use Sudo in front of the command and its just sitting there going on an hour now. I was told in this thread it would only take about a minute for the command to run but i guess it may take longer.
From my searches that command removes the MBR and that shouldn't take but a minute as another poster stated. Sudo give root permissions and the live CD does as well and i didn't get any error message with Sudo just doesn't make
sense for it to still be just sitting there for an hour.

For the next drive maybe i should add a buffer to the command ?
Sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

This is going to take forever x6. From multiple installs of Freenas i eneded up loosing 409 GB of free space and doing a dd on a brand new drive seems unnecessary. Is there another way to remove the previous zpools freenas created and ate up my free space with ?

 

[pirateghost]

I've never had to jump through any hoops like that before...

 

[Fraoch]

Can you not just wipe and zero the drives? FreeNAS has an option for deleting then overwriting with zeroes.

 

[Phe0nix]

Can you not just wipe and zero the drives? FreeNAS has an option for deleting then overwriting with zeroes.

Can you tell me more about where that is in FreeNAS as now it's been dd'ing the drive for 5 hours and still going. I will have to boot into freenas hunt for that version 9.3. I don't remember seeing that.

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS will only let you use disks without a partition table. If a partition table exists you won't be able to dd the disk from the CLI nor wipe the disk from the WebGUI. This is to protect users that have disks with data from accidentally overwriting their disk with their data.

This is normal and expected behavior. :)

 

[Phe0nix]

FreeNAS will only let you use disks without a partition table. If a partition table exists you won't be able to dd the disk from the CLI nor wipe the disk from the WebGUI. This is to protect users that have disks with data from accidentally overwriting their disk with their data.

This is normal and expected behavior. :)

I would just like to get all my storage back. I installed FreeNAS a couple of times and after creating a volume the second time i noticed i wasn't getting 10.9 TB of free space like i was on my initial install of FreeNAS and it had been reduced to
10.5. Any advice would be appriciated. I have a $1,7500.00 paper weight right now. From your post it sounds like i need to remove the partition table from each drive. I can use GParted to remove the partition but that isn't the same as the
partition table or is it ?

 

[Fraoch]

I was going to point out to @Phe0nix it's in Storage - View Disks - (highlight disk) - Wipe but:

FreeNAS will only let you use disks without a partition table. If a partition table exists you won't be able to dd the disk from the CLI nor wipe the disk from the WebGUI. This is to protect users that have disks with data from accidentally overwriting their disk with their data.

This is normal and expected behavior. :)

So that won't work...

Wait for dd then? Sounds like it's writing the entire drive?

 

[Phe0nix]

I was going to point out to @Phe0nix it's in Storage - View Disks - (highlight disk) - Wipe but:

So that won't work...

Wait for dd then? Sounds like it's writing the entire drive?

Sounded like cyberjock was saying dd won't work so i stopped it

 

[Fraoch]

Sounded like cyberjock was saying dd won't work so i stopped it and now can't even boot to Freenas as it has stopped at "mounting local file systems"

He was saying dd won't work from within FreeNAS, but you were using a Ubuntu Live CD so FreeNAS was not involved in the process at all.

When you were dd'ing, did the drive activity indicator show constant drive access? If so, it is working, just let it do its thing. dd gives no feedback by default and it may be writing to the entire drive, so it may take hours.

BTW you've been extremely unlucky. I haven't been around as long as the veterans here, but I have to say you've had one hell of a time...it sure isn't supposed to be this way. Hope things turn around for you.

 

[Phe0nix]

We'll I wipped the drives by detaching the volume and then recreated the volume and dataset and freenas is still only reporting 10.5 still instead of 10.9 as it did with my initial install. I'm loosing more then 409 GB when you consider parity. I just want to get back to the full 10.9 and start fresh with freenas. Anyone who can advise the best course of action. Writing zeros to the entire drive for all six drives will take an eternity, is there another way ?

Maybe this would correct my issue without dding

Trying this....

dd if=/dev/zero of=zero.small.file bs=1024 count=102400
cat /dev/zero > zero.file
rm zero.small.file
rm zero.file

 

[pirateghost]

We'll I wipped the drives by detaching the volume and then recreated the volume and dataset and freenas is still only reporting 10.5 still instead of 10.9 as it did with my initial install. I'm loosing more then 409 GB when you consider parity. I just want to get back to the full 10.9 and start fresh with freenas. Anyone who can advise the best course of action. Writing zeros to the entire drive for all six drives will take an eternity, is there another way ?

It seems you have made this way harder than it truly is.

Boot Ubuntu.
Open gparted.
Click 'device'
Create partition table.
Anything should work. Just don't do gpt

 

[Phe0nix]

It seems you have made this way harder than it truly is.

Boot Ubuntu.
Open gparted.
Click 'device'
Create partition table.
Anything should work. Just don't do gpt

I have only been following the direction of another member who assumed i knew linux.

Not sure if gparted is included with the Ubuntu ( 981 MB ) i downloaded, if not i'll install it on a USB drive rather than using IPMI to load the ISO

 

[pirateghost]

Not sure if gparted is included with the Ubuntu ( 981 MB ) i downloaded, if not i'll install it on a USB drive rather than using IPMI to load the ISO

it is included or i wouldnt recommend using it. also, not sure why you keep telling us how large the iso is. lol.

 

[pirateghost]

there is also this:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/211477/how-to-remove-gpt-from-hdd
(yes you can install software while booted up with the ubuntu iso, it just wont be there the next time you boot it, it isn't persistent while in 'demo' mode)

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/61142/remove-gpt-default-back-to-mbr

 

[Phe0nix]

there is also this:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/211477/how-to-remove-gpt-from-hdd
(yes you can install software while booted up with the ubuntu iso, it just wont be there the next time you boot it, it isn't persistent while in 'demo' mode)

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/61142/remove-gpt-default-back-to-mbr

Followed the first link and I was able to destroy the GTP but opted not to blank the MBR. After installing FreeNAS again the wizzard showed 10.9 available but after exiting out of the wizzard and creating the volume manually it only reports 10.5 again. Don't know what more i can do, I"m just going to forget about the missing 400 GB

My Drives & My Build

 

[rogerh]

As a matter of interests I remember (but I can't find now) a couple of threads from last year where people found that FreeNAS 9.3 showed lower free space on the same pool than 9.2.x had before an update. In one case it resulted in a warning about percentage fullness of the pool. It is possible some of the apparent loss of space is related to this. Maybe someone else remembers the discussion?