Help - FreeNAS HDD issues

[Hawkins]

Hello:

First thanks for taking the time to read and possibly help. Here's my situation

Have a Dell Poweredge T130. I installed 4 - 6 TB HGST HDDs in it. BIOS shows all drives as functioning and no issues/errors
Was able to do an install of FreeNAS from USB. Due to the issue, I did another clean install via IDRAC from the ISO mount feature.
The Boot drive is a 32 GB USB stick.

The problem:
When I go to set up my storage array, only 3 of the 4 - 6 TB HDD's is showing. I checked to make sure the boot drive truly was the USB stick and confirmed this to be the case. What could I possibly be doing wrong. BIOS shows all drives functioning but FreeNAS is not picking up one of the drives.

Thanks,
Hawkins

 

[Chris Moore]

only 3 of the 4 - 6 TB HDD's is showing.

Need the exact model information from the drives.

BIOS shows all drives functioning but FreeNAS is not picking up one of the drives.

I am not sure about that. Some system BIOS are funny and will show a drive even if it is powered off, where other systems will show it as no drive connected.

The first thing that springs to mind is the 3.3 volt situation. You can look at this video for more on that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnISM_LMuss

 

[Hawkins]

Drives are
HGST DeskStar NAS 3.5" 6TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s High-Performance Hard Drive 0S04007

I even ran a system test through bios and it showed all drives as functioning and healthy

 

[Chris Moore]

Drives are
HGST DeskStar NAS 3.5" 6TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s High-Performance Hard Drive 0S04007

I even ran a system test through bios and it showed all drives as functioning and healthy

Are they all connected to the system board or is one of them connected to an expansion card?

Did you re-seat the data cable connections at both ends?

 

[Chris Moore]

Drives are
HGST DeskStar NAS 3.5" 6TB 7200 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s High-Performance Hard Drive 0S04007

I even ran a system test through bios and it showed all drives as functioning and healthy

What disk controller is the system using? You really should provide this info up front instead of making me ask 500 questions.

Please read this:

Updated Forum Rules 12/5/18
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-12-5-18.45124/

 

[Apollo]

Is this the first time you are using Freenas and are all the HGST NAS drive brand new?
Sometime, when a drive already contains some partitions ( Dynamic disk from Windows, or some Grub boot partition) it can cause Freenas to not detect the drive.

 

[Chris Moore]

This video talks about the integrated disk controller and discusses setting it up as RAID, but you don't want that, you want AHCI for FreeNAS, the trouble is, if one of those disks was initialized as a RAID drive, it may not be passed to the OS correctly. In this system, it is probably best to use a separate SAS controller to run the drives as the video says, the integrated controller may not work properly with some operating systems and you should not use disks on a hardware RAID controller connected to FreeNAS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFlhpkfg6Jo

 

[Hawkins]

@Chris Moore My apologies. I read a lot of the documentation on the FreeNAS and the site but missed some of the details. I am new to a FreeNAS build and new to the server world. Sometimes I don't quite understand all the information that's necessary for you all to help me troubleshoot.

All HDD's are connected to the system board. Dell has prewired 4 drives marked HDD0, HDD1. HDD2, and HDD3. I've attached a snapshot of the last system test I did for what it's worth. The drives are brand new out of box and so the issue discussed by @Apollo should not be present here. I can confirm it is in ACHI mode. I don't have a RAID controller on the server so I don't think that would be an issue here.

 

[Hawkins]

Here is some additional information from the IDRAC information:

Disk 0 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1


BlockSizeInBytes 512 Bytes
BusProtocol SATA
Connector 0
Device TypePhysicalDisk
DeviceDescription Disk 0 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1
DriveFormFactor 3.5 inch
FQDD Disk.Direct.0-0:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
ForeignKeyIdentifier Information Not Available
FreeSizeInBytes 0 Bytes
HotSpareStatus No
InstanceID Disk.Direct.0-0:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
LastSystemInventoryTime 2018-12-28T02:32:36
LastUpdateTime 2018-12-27T07:57:15
Manufacturer HGST
ManufacturingDay 0
ManufacturingWeek 0
ManufacturingYear 0
MaxCapableSpeed 6Gbs
MediaType HDD
Model 726060ALE614
OperationName None
OperationPercentComplete 0%
PPID Information Not Available
PredictiveFailureState Smart Alert Absent
PrimaryStatus Unknown
RaidStatus Non-RAID
RemainingRatedWriteEndurance Unknown
Revision APGNW7JH
RollupStatus Unknown
SASAddress 5000CCA271CE7BB1
SecurityState Not Capable
SerialNumber K8H0VPBD
SizeInBytes 6001175126016 Bytes
Slot 0
T10PICapability Not supported
UsedSizeInBytes 0 Bytes


Disk 1 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1


BlockSizeInBytes 512 Bytes
BusProtocol SATA
Connector 1
Device TypePhysicalDisk
DeviceDescription Disk 1 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1
DriveFormFactor 3.5 inch
FQDD Disk.Direct.1-1:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
ForeignKeyIdentifier Information Not Available
FreeSizeInBytes 0 Bytes
HotSpareStatus No
InstanceID Disk.Direct.1-1:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
LastSystemInventoryTime 2018-12-28T02:32:36
LastUpdateTime 2018-12-27T07:57:15
Manufacturer HGST
ManufacturingDay 0
ManufacturingWeek 0
ManufacturingYear 0
MaxCapableSpeed 6Gbs
MediaType HDD
Model 726060ALE614
OperationName None
OperationPercentComplete 0%
PPID Information Not Available
PredictiveFailureState Smart Alert Absent
PrimaryStatus Unknown
RaidStatus Non-RAID
RemainingRatedWriteEndurance Unknown
Revision APGNW7JH
RollupStatus Unknown
SASAddress 5000CCA271CEABFF
SecurityState Not Capable
SerialNumber K8H18K8N
SizeInBytes 6001175126016 Bytes
Slot 1
T10PICapability Not supported
UsedSizeInBytes 0 Bytes


Disk 2 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1


BlockSizeInBytes 512 Bytes
BusProtocol SATA
Connector 2
Device TypePhysicalDisk
DeviceDescription Disk 2 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1
DriveFormFactor 3.5 inch
FQDD Disk.Direct.2-2:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
ForeignKeyIdentifier Information Not Available
FreeSizeInBytes 0 Bytes
HotSpareStatus No
InstanceID Disk.Direct.2-2:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
LastSystemInventoryTime 2018-12-28T02:32:36
LastUpdateTime 2018-12-27T07:57:15
Manufacturer HGST
ManufacturingDay 0
ManufacturingWeek 0
ManufacturingYear 0
MaxCapableSpeed 6Gbs
MediaType HDD
Model 726060ALE614
OperationName None
OperationPercentComplete 0%
PPID Information Not Available
PredictiveFailureState Smart Alert Absent
PrimaryStatus Unknown
RaidStatus Non-RAID
RemainingRatedWriteEndurance Unknown
Revision APGNW7JH
RollupStatus Unknown
SASAddress 5000CCA271CED559
SecurityState Not Capable
SerialNumber K8H1MKSN
SizeInBytes 6001175126016 Bytes
Slot 2
T10PICapability Not supported
UsedSizeInBytes 0 Bytes


Disk 3 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1


BlockSizeInBytes 512 Bytes
BusProtocol SATA
Connector 3
Device TypePhysicalDisk
DeviceDescription Disk 3 on Embedded AHCI Controller 1
DriveFormFactor 3.5 inch
FQDD Disk.Direct.3-3:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
ForeignKeyIdentifier Information Not Available
FreeSizeInBytes 0 Bytes
HotSpareStatus No
InstanceID Disk.Direct.3-3:AHCI.Embedded.1-1
LastSystemInventoryTime 2018-12-28T02:32:36
LastUpdateTime 2018-12-27T07:57:15
Manufacturer HGST
ManufacturingDay 0
ManufacturingWeek 0
ManufacturingYear 0
MaxCapableSpeed 6Gbs
MediaType HDD
Model 726060ALE614
OperationName None
OperationPercentComplete 0%
PPID Information Not Available
PredictiveFailureState Smart Alert Absent
PrimaryStatus Unknown
RaidStatus Non-RAID
RemainingRatedWriteEndurance Unknown
Revision APGNW7JH
RollupStatus Unknown
SASAddress 5000CCA271CE8FFB
SecurityState Not Capable
SerialNumber K8H112XN
SizeInBytes 6001175126016 Bytes
Slot 3
T10PICapability Not supported
UsedSizeInBytes 0 Bytes

 

[Hawkins]

I feel like I am blowing up my own feed but trying to provide as much info as possible. I've unplugged and plugged back in all the drives, played with the embedded controller, etc. and still no avail. I ran a camcontrol devlist in FreeNAS and have attached the result. Note that the two USB drives are there for the boot device and I was going to create a backup boot drive as well (Potentially). Is there any way to distinguish between this result and what specific drive isn't showing up in FreeNAS?

@Chris Moore , I did look into the Power Disable function you mentioned above. I do not have the 3.3v issue described so don't think that is contributing.

 

[Apollo]

What happens if you only connect the failing drive?

 

[Hawkins]

@Apollo I really don't know which drive is failing. I haven't had a due to site setup and kids to connect only one drive at a time (or disconnect one drive at a time) to see what happens. IDRAC helps with diagnostics because I don't have to be physically in front of server to run the diagnostics/etc.

Thank you for your time and help though! Much appreciated as I take this leap into FreeNAS

 

[ralph5909]

It may be a problem with the SATA controller itself. I recommend trying a different controller through one of the PCIe ports while troubleshooting the issue.

First I'd like you to look at dmesg if the disappearing drives are showing any errors.

Then make sure the SATA controllers are detected by FreeNAS.
lspci -v | grep SATA

Also certain controllers don't appear to sit well so try re-installing using the other type of bootloader - UEFI or BIOS.

Another thing you could try is to remove the drives, plug them one by one into a hot-swap PC to delete the partitions so FreeNAS doesn't bug out at existing data on there.

 

[Hawkins]

It may be a problem with the SATA controller itself. I recommend trying a different controller through one of the PCIe ports while troubleshooting the issue.

First I'd like you to look at dmesg if the disappearing drives are showing any errors.

Then make sure the SATA controllers are detected by FreeNAS.
lspci -v | grep SATA

Also certain controllers don't appear to sit well so try re-installing using the other type of bootloader - UEFI or BIOS.

Another thing you could try is to remove the drives, plug them one by one into a hot-swap PC to delete the partitions so FreeNAS doesn't bug out at existing data on there.

Ralph, I am unfamiliar with Ispci -v (I tried it in shell and it didn't work), I did run "dmesg | grep SATA" and it only found 3 SATA drives. ada0, ada1, and ada2.

On my original install, I used BIOS. On a fresh install, I used UEFI. No success here. I'll have to remove the drives. Dell is coming here to replace a case fan (I asked to send it to me but they insisted someone come out). I may ask the technician what his thoughts are.

 

[ralph5909]

Well lscpi (LSPCI but lowercase) should show you all devices that FreeNAS detects. You could try grepping for any other devices that may resemble the controller if you can spot any.
Are all the SATA ports from the same exact controller?

Get the serial number of the detected drives, match them up on the server, detach them, then move the undetected drive(s) to the ports that the detected drives use. (You can use smartctl to grab the serial numbers.) Also create a label and attach it to somewhere on the drive so you can easily identify them, in case they need to be replaced.

Please try quick wiping all the disks from a separate system. And also try dmesg, but post all the output here.

 

[Hawkins]

@ralph5909 Thanks for the explanation.

I actually was able to fix it. Kind of a dumb fix too. I unplugged two of the 4 HDDs, booted up the server, saw them both and created a pool. Then shut down, plugged in a 3rd HDD, started server and created a 2nd pool for the 3rd HDD. Then I shut down again, plugged in the 4th and final and the server recognized it. So I detached all my pools and created one big pool with all the HDD's. Not sure why it took this to get it working but I guess I'll take it. Kind of frustrating that FreeNAS didn't recognize all 4 drives the first time but oh well -- it seems to work now!

 

[ralph5909]

Glad to hear it. Enjoy!