Helpppp, I'm trying to get a SAS controller configured and booting to Freenas

[retiredknight]

First off let me thank the group for being here for everyone and I hope someone can get me through this as I'm at my wits end.

I am currently running an older ASUS m2n-sli with 10 gig of memory and 4 core processor configured for Freenas which has served me well for over 4 years with no issues. The NAS is used for backup and as a Plex Media Server.

The Media part consists of 4-8tb WD Red Drives, The back up part consists of 2-10tb WD Red Drives. Since this was built on a old pc platform I'm allotted 6 sata ports and usb ports. The media side has plenty of room left and the back up side is over 80% full. Thinking that this was a simple fix I bought 2-18tb drives to replace the 10tb. Easy as 123, not. Nowhere on the web have I found what the current limit of hd space that can be attached to a given mother board.

Following the directions of all that I read here I used the web gui and offlined ADA5p2, shut down the pc, replace the the old drive with the new and rebooted. after reboot I go in to replace the missing drive with the new one only to find that the isn't one to be found. I repeated this 3 times before I really looked at what was happening and that the new 18tb drive was not showing up on BIOS. Ok silly me never figured out that the is a limit that BIOS will accept even if I don't know what it is. Back to the forums I go looking for solutions to get over this hurdle. Piece of cake as noted, get a sas card install and configure it and you will be good to go. Off to ebay to get a LSI 9100i already supposed to be configured for Freenas to solve all of my problems.

I received my card and smiled, this is going to be great. I installed the card hooked up one of the 18tb drives with fingers crossed I booted the system. I get through basic BIOS boot and into the sas boot, sas reports the drive and sits there. No boot, nothing. Back to reading I go. There are a few post that resemble the problems that I'm having but nothing that really solves my issues. So I think, ok lets mirror a SSD to boot and see if this works. The sas reports both drives, I configured the SSD as a boot drive and nothing, just sits there.

I shut down everything, pull the sas, reboot and all is fine. I have another pc laying around so I toss in the SSD, hook up a keyboard and monitor and see what happens. The SSD boots and doesn't see any pools, which is expected as there are no drives in the test pc. I install the sas into the test pc and hook up the 18tb and ssd to see what will happen, test pc will not post, hangs on mem check. Power down and remove sas and drives, rehook up ssd and test pc makes it through BIOS again wanting to boot Freenas.

I'm thinking I have a bad sas card though I can see the card, go into and configure it so no not a bad sas. It's a pc, pcie issure arggggggg.

I'm attaching pictures of everything including the test pc and what I'm using as a NAS. I'm hoping someone out there can help me get through this of lead me into a direction that I can get the 18tb dives up and running. After that I have 2 additional WD 10 tbs along with the two taken out that I'll resilver to expand the media pool. Thanks in advance for any and all help you can give me. I'm not a novice and cut my teeth on a IBM 8088 with a 10mg hard drive running DOS 5.0 but I'm nowhere near an expert in pc's I guess I know enough to be dangerous. Thanks again. If I can supply any another information please ask.

 

[retiredknight]

To anyone that may have this situation and has newer hdd's that don't show in bios here is you answer. After hitting my head against the wall and hearing about theartofserver here on this site I decided to ask his advice and what sas card that her would recommend. Here is the response I received back....

"I would be happy to sell you a card, but perhaps it is not needed in this situation. I have a feeling that you might be triggering the "power disable" issue on your new 18TB drives. I explain this here:

https://youtu.be/fnISM_LMuss"

After finding a molex to sata power adapter that I have many laying around and trying the Seagate drives in the test PC with the adapters my 18tb drives show up without any problems. Yeaaaaaaaa, problem solved. I reconfigured my asus system using these adapters on my hot swap bays and they showed up in BIOS and to Freenas. I swapped one drive last night and resilvered it without any problems. Today I swapped out the other 10tb to 18tb and am currently resilvering it. I looks like the pool is expanding as it does the final drive in a raidz2. I've gone from 82% full to 42% full.

Here is a special shout out to theartofserver for sorting this out. Thanks to all........

 

[Ericloewe]

Ah yes, everyone's favorite anti-feature. Because fixing firmware bugs is for chumps when you can just tell your victim customer to reboot their disks.