Freenas and Dell T110 can't 'see' disk but Mac can

[rwillett]

I've been struggling with this problem all day and can't even understand what the problem is. I'm still learning and playing with my FreeNAS server so if (when!) things go wrong, nothing is lost.

I've just been given a 1TB Samsung SATA disk by a friend of a friend (sounds ominous :) ). My intention was to create a small three disk pool with a spare disk and simulate a disk failing and replacing it. I'd rather learn how to do this now just in case I need to do it for real.

1. I powered down my server, added the disk to my newly flashed H310 card and powered up. Mmm No new disk. Other disks on the card are seen correctly.
2. Checked cables, powered down again and powered up, this time looking at the console. No new disk. Very odd.
3. Powered down again, changed power cable AND sata cable. Powered up. No new disk. Very odd.
4. Powered down again. Took all disks out apart from new disk, put it in a slot with a power cable and SATA cable that I know works as it was used on a live running disk. Still on H310 card. No new disk. Very odd.
5. Powered down again. Moved the hard disk to an internal SATA slot and powered up. No new disk. Really odd.
6. Went to BSD shell, gpart list, I can see the boot USB disk but nothing else. No new disk.

OK. The disk is screwed. Clearly the disk is screwed as it's not being seen.

Just for laughs, added it to my Mac (powered down, blah, blah blah), fired up Disk Utility and there's the disk. It was setup as an Apple disk in the past. I reformatted it (to APFS for a laugh). Checked it works and it does.

7. Powered down Mac, put disk back in FreeNAS server, powered up and ...... drums roll .... nothing. Not seen in the BIOS, not seen in the H310 utility, not seen by FreeNAS (which is now reporting SMARTD is not running). I have proven alerts are working :) Not seen by SMARTCTL.

So now I'm confused. I can accept that FreeNAS might not like the disk based on the formatting, but in my experience the BIOS should see the disk regardless of what the formatting is.

The server is a Dell T110 ii with a Xeon chip and 16GB ECC memory. The server appears to be rock solid.
The 1TB disk is a Samsung 1TB HD103SI
The card is a reflashed H310 card in IT-Mode.
The other disks are similar old Samsung or Seagate Barracuda 1TB disks. I'm using these for testing and learning as the CFO has not yet approved the PO for set of 4TB NAS Reds :(

I did look at the disk information using the Mac Disk utility and it showed what looked like the right information. However I don't think Mac OS X uses Smarttools. I think they have their own set of utilities as smartctl is NOT part of the standard Mojave OS X build.

I'm wondering if this is a special 'Apple' disk with odd (or non existent) firmware, I know Apple does stupid stuff like this, could be the GPT format or something like that?

I'm getting tired of starting and stopping machines to work this out. I would have thought that the Dell T110 ii would at least know there was a disk attached even if it couldn't read it.

I'm going to power down again, add it back to the Mac, power up VMWare fusion, run Windows 10 and reformat the disk as MBR (or anything that's not Mac).

Any other suggestions welcomed.

Thanks

Rob

 

[rwillett]

Just remembered I havea Windows 10 partition, so have fired that up and connected the disk.

Reformatted as MBR and it is visible to Windows 10 smartctl

C:\Program Files\smartmontools\bin>smartctl.exe -i /dev/sda
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-1803] (sf-7.0-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: SAMSUNG SpinPoint F2 EG
Device Model: SAMSUNG HD103SI
Serial Number: S210JDWZ309537
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0024e9 00329fb33
Firmware Version: 1AG01120
User Capacity: 1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA/ATAPI-7, ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 3b
Local Time is: Thu Apr 25 20:11:49 2019 GMTST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

This looks good. So now to power down and move disk across (again).

Rob

 

[Chris Moore]

I'm wondering if this is a special 'Apple' disk with odd (or non existent) firmware, I know Apple does stupid stuff like this,

Does this disk have an Apple logo on it like the one below? There is such a thing as disks that are made with custom firmware for Apple.
Example:

I have not had to deal with that kind of hardware since the late 90s, because I have been working in a place where we don't do Mac, but it once was the case that a Mac would not boot from a drive that was not Mac Specific and it could tell because the drive had custom firmware.

I'm going to power down again, add it back to the Mac, power up VMWare fusion, run Windows 10 and reformat the disk as MBR (or anything that's not Mac).

If the reason the drive isn't working in FreeNAS is down to some custom firmware in the drive and you are booting from a dual boot utility on Mac hardware, your Mac hardware Is still handling the firmware of the drive and is the thing allowing Windows to access the drive. This proves nothing.

I'm getting tired of starting and stopping machines to work this out. I would have thought that the Dell T110 ii would at least know there was a disk attached even if it couldn't read it.

Not if the drive has some crazy Mac specific firmware that the Dell doesn't know how to access. This is NOT a problem with any component other than the drive.

 

[rwillett]

Windows 10 (real partition, not VMWare) reads the disk and can format the disk.

Thats the output here


Today at 9:15 PM
#2
Just remembered I havea Windows 10 partition, so have fired that up and connected the disk.

Reformatted as MBR and it is visible to Windows 10 smartctl

C:\Program Files\smartmontools\bin>smartctl.exe -i /dev/sda
smartctl 7.0 2018-12-30 r4883 [x86_64-w64-mingw32-w10-1803] (sf-7.0-1)
Copyright (C) 2002-18, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: SAMSUNG SpinPoint F2 EG
Device Model: SAMSUNG HD103SI
Serial Number: S210JDWZ309537
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0024e9 00329fb33
Firmware Version: 1AG01120
User Capacity: 1,000,204,886,016 bytes [1.00 TB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA/ATAPI-7, ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 3b
Local Time is: Thu Apr 25 20:11:49 2019 GMTST
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

However the ******* thing still doesn't work on FreeNAS. It isn't even seen in either the H310 OR the onboard SATA. It is seen by a PC motherboard though. I can load it in a real Windows 10 system and manipulate it, so the firmware isn't that different.

!"£$%^&£$%^&*(£$%^&*( Apple.

Rob

It does have the Apple logo.

 

[Heracles]

Hi rwillet,

I am using a T-110 myself, as well as some other Dell servers.

Before trying to have the disk recognized by FreeNAS, ensure you have it recognized by the hardware itself. At the end of you last post, you said that the H310 can not see the disk. So first thing is to get the drive detected and configured by the H310 controller.

One test would be to remove one of the working drive and plug that problematic drive instead at the same place with the same cables.

In all cases, no need to boot up to FreeNAS before the disk is accepted first by the H310.

Good luck troubleshooting your setup,

 

[rwillett]

@Heracles

Hi, thanks for the response.

I didn't make it clear in my post, but I was doing all those things about checking in the BIOS. I did use cables that work on a disk and then used the same cables on this new disk.

I checked the disk connected to the H310 controller by going into the controller at boot time. I also connected the disk directly to the motherboard and checked using F2 at boot time.

What puzzles me is that the disk does work with a proper Windows 10 machine on a Gigabyte Z97X Motherboard, I can format the disk, repartition the disk etc and no issues. I can also do a smartctl on the disk and to all intents and purposes on the Z97X motherboard it works fine.

I may throw a dedicated Ubuntu partition on that box as I have a spare 120GB SSD and see if that shows anything.

I would expect the Z97X motherboard not to recognise the disk if the Dell T110 won't recognise the disk.

The Dell T110 BIOS has a very a limited set of options compared to the Z97X, both are set to UEFI and the SATA options are AHCI, beyond that not sure what else could be causing the issue.

As Chris has said, this could be due to the Apple firmware, but I've never seen this before. I'll look at if there are any utilities to reflash the drive.

Rob

 

[rwillett]

Just looked at the Seagate site as this appears to be a Seagate Barracude Green drive according to Seagate.

There's nothing that indicates it has any special firmware.

 

[rwillett]

Just fired up a native (non VMWare Fusion) Windows 10 partition again and had a look at the disk with MiniTool Partition Wizard. I can partition the disk, format the disk as MBR, I can create files and directories.

The sector size is 512 bytes so the thought it might be some stupid sector size is not the problem.

I also checked with gsmartool which is a nice interface to smartmontools and it all looks fine

I cannot find any recent docs that talk about Apple custom firmware on hard disks. I've had Mac's since 1984 and have gone through the G4 models before they became Intel based. Since they became Intel based CPU's I have never brought an Apple hard disk and have used whatever was lying around. I've updated and changed iMac disks, mac Mini and Mac Pro Tower boxes Now just because Apple can use any hard disk does not mean that this specific disk drive can be used on any PC, but the fact it works on a Windows 10 PC with no issues (AFAIK) indicates that I think it should work on the Dell T110.

Puzzled of North Yorkshire.

Rob

 

[Heracles]

Hi again rwillet,

Unfortunately, I have to ask you again the same questions...

I didn't make it clear in my post, but I was doing all those things about checking in the BIOS. I did use cables that work on a disk and then used the same cables on this new disk.

I checked the disk connected to the H310 controller by going into the controller at boot time. I also connected the disk directly to the motherboard and checked using F2 at boot time.

To say that you checked something is not very useful... What would be useful would be the result you achieved...

As of now, I still do not know if the H310 controler sees the disk and can use it or not.,

For the disk to work where you do not want it to work is also not very useful because at the end, we know that this is not what you are looking for. It helps a little by confirming that the disk can work in some conditions, but these conditions are of no use for the rest of the case.

It does have the Apple logo.

Because of that, I would trust Chris and focus 100% on that logo. Either stop trying to use that disk at all or try to flash it.

Here, I use only hard drives designed for NAS. They are meant to run 24/7, meant to sustain a lot of vibration and more. They are also designed not to fight their own storage in case of problem, relying on the NAS and its redundancy to answer the request should they not be able to do it themselves. On my side, I use only the IronWolf series for drives from Seagate.

 

[rwillett]

@Heracles

I'm sorry my description is not clear.

I cannot get the Dell T110 to see this specific hard disk in either the BIOS system setup (F2) or the reflashed H310 card configuration. I cannot post anything as there is literally nothing to see.

I have connected the drive up using different SATA cables to different SATA ports on the Dell, then checked in the BIOS using F2 at boot time. It does not show up. I have done this as the only drive on the system.

I have connected the drive to the reflashed H310 card on the Dell T110 using different cables that work with other drives and it doesn't show up in the card configuration utility at boot time. Other drives do.

What is puzzling me is the fact it works on other PC's with no issues. My worry was that I have incorrectly configured the BIOS on the Dell T110 or have incorrectly configured the H310 card, but as they both work with other drives I don't believe this is the case.

I am still trying to understand how FreeNAS work before I commit anything to the box, so using a series of old disks are useful to me as a learning experience. These 1TB drives will then be put back in the cupboard.

I am not aware of how one can change the firmware on the drives, though I have looked.

One of the decisions to make is how many drives to buy when I want to make this a working box. e.g. 6 2TB drives or 5 3TB drives or 4 x 4TB drives or something different again. There are significant costs to drives and I do not have a large budget, so I want to understand as much as I can about FreeNAS and how I could use it.

In the UK:

1. A 2TB drive is £75 (though it can sometimes be seen for £65)
2. A 3TB drive is approx £85-90.
3. A 4TB drive is approx £110.

These costs add up andI want to get it right as the CFO will not allow me to change it.

WD Red and Ironwolf are pretty much the same price, though Ironwolf drives don't tend to be as popular or discounted. Constellations are normally significantly more as are HGST drives.

Thanks

Rob

 

[rwillett]

I think I'll give up on the drive.

I've had another go trying to get the drive recognised by the T110 and failed. I cannot find a firmware update for it either. It was bugging me but enough is enough.

I have enough other drives to test and learn safely. It's clear there is enough of an incompatibility with this drive and the Dell even though it works fine on my Mac and PC. I'll make it into a PC backup drive.

Thanks

Rob