Gigabyte MB Issue with FreeNAS?

[Trent2000TA]

I have been trying for several days now to resolve this issue and have yet to figure it out. I finally outgrew my Netgear ReadyNAS box and am taking my 4x 4TB red WD Nas drives and building a new PC that hopefully will have FreeNAS on it for mainly Plex use. The issue I am having is that my Gigabyte board does not see these hard drives unless Windows is installed on a given machine.

For example, those 4 drives are on a board right now and the Bios, no FreeNAS, see them. I can plug them into one of my other PC's and it sees them immediately via Windows and Bios, including other Gigabyte boards that are older than the one I have now. The board they are on now that isn't seeing them previously had Windows installed on a SSD drive and it did see all the drives when I tried a bit earlier today. It just doesn't add up why it won't see them.

I have verified I have the most current Bios and sent inquiries to Gigabyte but haven't heard back. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[jgreco]

Generally speaking, most Gigabyte boards are Windows consumer-grade crud, and may be hobbled by things such as random SATA controllers, non-Intel ethernet adapters, non-ECC memory, and all the other things I rip on in https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

There's a more recent hardware suggestions post somewhere under Resources, and you're encouraged to look at any of these for information on good, solid, FreeNAS-compatible hardware. Sadly, it is not highly recommended to recycle an old PC into a NAS. As much as people get angry when they're told this, the simple fact of the matter is that you want something that FreeBSD works well with and that is reliable, suited for the task, etc. Random PC hardware usually isn't.

 

[enemy85]

I have been trying for several days now to resolve this issue and have yet to figure it out. I finally outgrew my Netgear ReadyNAS box and am taking my 4x 4TB red WD Nas drives and building a new PC that hopefully will have FreeNAS on it for mainly Plex use. The issue I am having is that my Gigabyte board does not see these hard drives unless Windows is installed on a given machine.

For example, those 4 drives are on a board right now and the Bios, no FreeNAS, see them. I can plug them into one of my other PC's and it sees them immediately via Windows and Bios, including other Gigabyte boards that are older than the one I have now. The board they are on now that isn't seeing them previously had Windows installed on a SSD drive and it did see all the drives when I tried a bit earlier today. It just doesn't add up why it won't see them.

I have verified I have the most current Bios and sent inquiries to Gigabyte but haven't heard back. Any help is greatly appreciated.

First, what @jgreco told you is totally right...
Second, you didn't even told us any information about the HW you are trying to use...so how could we even try to help u?

 

[wblock]

my Gigabyte board does not see these hard drives unless Windows is installed on a given machine.

Actually, you said the motherboard did see them, just not FreeNAS. Which motherboard is it, specifically? I would bet that the drives have RAID metadata on them. The output of graid list on FreeNAS would be interesting.

Just for a differing opinion, I think mid-grade Gigabyte stuff is pretty good, and have used it with success for FreeBSD. Intel chipsets and Ethernet are the ones I would (did) use. I might be using it now if they'd had the ECC motherboards out when I bought.

 

[jgreco]

There's a difference between FreeBSD and FreeNAS, though. Usually a FreeBSD user won't complain about poor network performance or data corruption on a consumer board because they typically don't notice. That does not seem to be the case with FreeNAS, in my experience. It isn't just about the things the OS theoretically supports, because theoretically FreeNAS supports a HUUUUGE range of hardware, just like FreeBSD. In practice, though, these things make a difference, and the mid-range Gigabyte stuff that would make for an okay FreeBSD desktop are still pretty crappy if you try to use them as a server.

 

[wblock]

Usually a FreeBSD user won't complain about poor network performance or data corruption on a consumer board because they typically don't notice.

Haha, you had me going for a minute there. FreeBSD users as oblivious "desktop" users. :)

 

[Trent2000TA]

First, this isn't just a recycled board. I have had this in a home theater PC for about a year with a good 8 core processor in it. It was new at that time and so was the processor. It was just used for transcoding since the NetgearNAS was nowhere near powerful enough to do it. Now that I am transcoding and sharing 4k content, the NetgearNAS just couldn't keep up. This was my reason to change to a full separate server running a proper OS that would be capable.

I can't speak to how good or not Gigabyte boards are. I've used them for years and never had an issue. I resolved mine here and it wasn't the board. But that's just my own personal use and opinion.

Ultimately the issue came down to something so very simple that I debated even mentioning it here :) On my modular PSU I was using one cable with 4 SATA power connectors on it. Those 4 were going to those drives. Sure enough, the cable was bad so obviously they weren't showing up. Swapped cables, problem solved and I have begun the slow migration of 10+TB of media over and teaching myself how to use this software.

Thanks to those that tried to help. I appreciate it.

 

[jgreco]

You're welcome!

In the future, though, please note that the forum rules require you to provide more detailed hardware information. This is very important if you want to get a useful response. Without knowing the details, we're pretty much left to making general comments and guesses as to what the issue might be. The forum rules are conveniently accessible from the top bar of every forum web page and they provide guidance as to how to assemble a useful problem report that is more likely to elicit a response that can actually help resolve your issue.

 

[Trent2000TA]

You're welcome!

In the future, though, please note that the forum rules require you to provide more detailed hardware information. This is very important if you want to get a useful response. Without knowing the details, we're pretty much left to making general comments and guesses as to what the issue might be. The forum rules are conveniently accessible from the top bar of every forum web page and they provide guidance as to how to assemble a useful problem report that is more likely to elicit a response that can actually help resolve your issue.

My apologies and I will do my best to be more thorough next time. I've been on your side of the fence when it comes to car forums that I moderate frequently so I know how difficult it can be to drag that info out of a new person to the group and product. Thanks for being nice about it :)