SOLVED Error: Unable to GPT format the disk "ada0"

[Jackie Lowery]

When trying to create a ZFS or UFS volume i get this error :

Error: Unable to GPT format the disk "ada0"

Here is a printout of dmesg | grep ada0 :

# dmesg | grep ada0
ada0 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
ada0: <WDC WD6000HLHX-01JJPV0 04.05G04> ATA-8 SATA 3.x device
ada0: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada0: Command Queueing enabled
ada0: 572325MB (1172123568 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
ada0: Previously was known as ad4
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Disk ada0 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Subdisk OPENNAS:0-ada0 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.

 

[Jackie Lowery]

Can someone help me with how to unload this array so i can use the drives ?
here is the output from dmesg | grep GEOM :

GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Array DDF-LE created.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Disk ada0 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Subdisk OPENNAS:0-ada0 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Disk ada1 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Subdisk OPENNAS:1-ada1 state changed from NONE to ACTIVE.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Volume started.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Volume OPENNAS state changed from STARTING to OPTIMAL.
GEOM_RAID: DDF-LE: Provider raid/r0 for volume OPENNAS created.
GEOM_RAID5: Module loaded, version 1.1.20130907.44 (rev 5c6d2a159411)

 

[Jackie Lowery]

ok. so i finally figured it out. a lot of forum threads talked about using "gmirror" and i got hung up on that for a while. as you can see in my last post, i was running a geom_raid. I finally found out the command to use - "graid". Here are the complete steps :

graid status ## this command showed me the raid and it's name, in my case raid/r0(zero)
graid stop raid/r0 ## this stopped and unloaded the raid, giving me access to the drives

Afterwards, I was able to wipe the drives and use them to create a ZFS volume.

 

[Dusan]

Can you please provide output of:
graid list
graid status

 

[Jackie Lowery]

Thanks Dusan. You almost beat me to it. How do i mark thread as solved?

 

[Dusan]

No idea, 1000+ posts and I never created a thread with a prefix :).

 

[likedi]

Thank YOU, Jackie Lowery, you just ended a bunch of hopeless hours trying to get rid of old array (from different system, different freenas uncompatible raid controller) !

Just graid status, graid delete "nameOfTheRaid" and solved, no problem creating volume afterwards. Thanks once more.

 

[Jackie Lowery]

glad to help. :)

 

[scsi.king]

Thanks to all that post.
So here is my story: I am a brand new user to freenas and decided to load it on simple setup with version 9.2.1.8 - (1) USB Stick and then use (1) internal SATA 250GB hard disk as storage. Seemed simple enough; however, when I tried to assign the 250GB drive to the FreeNAS software, I kept getting the error "unable to GPT format the disk ada0 every time I went to ZFS Volume Manager to assign it.
Is seem that the problem was out of the initial setup, graid somehow included the 250GB SATA hard drive in raid of some kind (even though it was a single drive).
Perhaps in a previous system I had used a raid setup. I want you to know I used a disk wipe utility (active kill disk) to zero out 1% of the drive, and that did not help).

Here are the commands that helped me get past this from the built in SHELL window on left hand side of FreeNAS administration web page:
1) camcontrol devlist <- this showed me <seagate ....> at scbus0 ... (pass0, ada0) <- ada0 (is the important part here)
2) diskinfo -v ada0 <- this showed me the drive characteristics (so I could see the system could identify it and the size was the right one to be my drive)
The next part is from memory since I no longer have the graid on my drive anymore
3) griad list <- showed me that raid/r0 was assigned this drive (and taken it over!)
4) graid stop raid/r0 <- stop the raid so we can delete it
5) graid delete -fv raid/r0 <- delete that raid off the drive for good
6) cd /dev <- get into the folder that holds the ada0 device
7) dd if=zero of=ada0 bs=1G <- starts to zero out the drive (let run for 2 minutes then I used Control + C to break out of the format - took 45 seconds to stop)
8) exit the shell with EXIT
9) Go assign the drive to the NAS using the ZFS Volume Manager <- Worked as expected!

I hope this helps some people in the future.
Perhaps there can be an advanced "NUKE this drive" option in the future to make this easier for those who want to use it?