Error getting space rrors with WD (Green) drives

[brunnenguk]

I recently migrated from FreeNAS 0.7 to 8.0 RELEASE

Previously I had FreeNAS running on a 2Gb USB key in an HP ML110 G5 server (the USB stick is connected to a port on the mainboard itself, a feature that makes the FreeNAS embedded install even more useful)

Storage was proviuded by a pair of WD10EARS drives in a RAID1 array (10Tb WD Green) and JBOD storage provided by an old WD 200Gb and a Seagate 250Gb drive.

Installation proceeded smoothly and network was easily configured. When I tried to add the 2 WD10EARS drives I was presented with the following error on the volumes page:

test2 /mnt/test2 Error getting used space (Error) Error getting available space Error getting total space ONLINE

When booting I also noticed the following message: "geometry does not match label"

I added the 200Gb drive as a standalone volume and this was added flawlessly.

As a result I have had to migrate back to 0.7.2 (under which my WD10EARS disks are behaving normally), which is a shame as the redesigned UI for 8.0 is very slick.

The warning "geometry does not match label" got my attention, would this indicate that the disk label is being used to determine capacity?

I'm a little confused by this as the disks work perfectly under the older version of FreeNAS.

 

[jenksdrummer]

I think the 8.0-Release doesn't support Advanced Format drives - jumper pin 7 and 8 on the drives and re-create your disks/array. This will knock the offset on your 4K drives from 63 to 64 sectors, allowing the 4K<=>512b emulation to function properly. Wth 7.2, with the 4K option, it was aligned...so with FN8 not understanding the drive's geometry according to the partition...well, you can see why I think this is the case...

I hae 4x WD20EARS drives, and I jumpered them seeing that FreeNAS 8.0-RELEASE doesn't have a 4K drive option in the GUI. Supposedly there's a workaround...that or you can go to 8.0.1 beta-series.

That said, I did not try my drives without them being jumpered....but I'm taking a guess as this might be what's going on.

 

[brunnenguk]

Thanks for explaining that :). In the interim I've dropped back to 7.2 as I needed to get my storage box up and running again, I think using an external drive as the transfer disk made me a little nervous - it's amazing how used you get to having a RAID mirror.

Do you know if advanced format support is in the roadmap? If it is I can wait for an update and try again. If not I'll try bridging jumper pin 7/8 at some point (having just rebuilt the storage box and gotten it up and running again I'll wait before I go through all that again)

 

[jenksdrummer]

I imagine it's on the roadmap, Advanced Format drives are only going to get more and more saturation in the marketplace.

7.2 had support for it, but when they moved to 8.0-Release it was dropped from the GUI (might even be more than that...but I *think* there is a way to manage it through the shell, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure) Also also *think* (a bit more sure on this) that 8.0.1-Beta-1 has support for 4K drives, but not sure if it's GUI or shell only. I haven't delved into the Beta's yet, and I'm not sure if I will - seems to perform just fine with the jumper in place, running 8.0-Release, for what I intend to use it for - which in the end...FreeNAS(storage)=>Win7(using Media Center)=>XBox360 for showing movies.

I have Windows Home Server 2011, but as I found out, Dynamic Disks and Advanced format drives do NOT play well - instant partition mis-alignment. GPT or MBR - once you make it Dynamic (and make it a RAID-5 volume), it kicks the partition-alignment out of whack. With how Windows operates, and recognizes a 4K drive otherwise, I am very unsure if the jumper is what is needed or not - I'd been running it without thinking everything was fine, but, the partitions are definately mis-aligned. Oddly, they are fine by themselves if they are GPT or MBR as single drives. Once Dynamic though...they go out of whack.

Anyhow, on your error - I got the same thing last night after running 7.2 for a bit, and attempting to see if I can get ZFS working on it...I gave up after a while and decided to go to 8.0-Release since it's so much easier (to me) to use. I created the ZFS volume, and got the error. I also didn't have the jumper in place. Blasted the config, put on the jumpers, and it worked like a champ.