I'm trying to add pool on Truenas, disk not showing up under create pool

[NelsonC]

Hi,

I'm using a Mini PC, I purchased a 5 TB drive, this is the only drive installed.
Installed TrueNas from my USB stick to the new 5TB drive. The install completed fine.
I can log in to the console, I go to Storage/ Disk the drive shows up as ada0, disk size 4.55 TB
But when I go into Pools, add, then Create Pool, my disk does not show up.

I'm just going to use this at Home, to backup my 3TB of Photos.

Thanks

Nelson

 

[cobrakiller58]

Operating system device: The TrueNAS operating system requires 8 GB of space on a device that is separate from the storage disks. It is strongly recommended to use a 16 GB or greater SSD or hard drive for the operating system. It is not recommended to use a USB stick as a boot device because the build quality or device lifetime varies too much to reliably use as the operating system device.

from https://www.truenas.com/docs/hub/initial-setup/install/firsttimeinstall/

Personally I will be getting 2 of PBU120GS25SSDR for my next install as they should run trouble free as they do not have the silicon motion problem controllers in them. You can grab a smallish SSD or HDD to use as the boot drive so you can use your 5TB drive for storage. Just make sure if you do get an SSD to avoid any that have the Silicon motion controllers in them as some have issues.

 

[NelsonC]

Thanks, I was wondering about that single partition. The Mini-PC only has room for one hard drive, can I partition the drive to something like 20 gb for the OS, then use the rest for storage? This is a fresh install, so I can start over.


Nelson

 

[cobrakiller58]

Technically yes but it is not recommended and I personally strongly discourage it for complexity reasons. Do you have the spec sheet on the mini pc is there any space to mount a 2.5inch drive? can it boot from M.2? (I think someone here had done that) Is an external device an option?

 

[danb35]

Otherwise, a small USB SSD would work as a boot device. FreeNAS/TrueNAS have always required the boot device to be separate from data; I doubt that will ever change. But if you're using a system that only has room for one spinner, I'd seriously question whether TrueNAS is a good fit for your needs.

 

[sretalla]

Thanks, I was wondering about that single partition. The Mini-PC only has room for one hard drive, can I partition the drive to something like 20 gb for the OS, then use the rest for storage?

That's exactly what makes that Mini PC a bad candidate to run TrueNAS, but if you understand the hole you're digging for yourself (no redundancy and no room to expand), then go nuts, here's the link to the writeup on how to do what you're asking (although I would seriously consider @danb35 's advice instead of that (even if you ignore his last statement).

HOWTO: setup a pair of larger SSDs for boot pool and data

Moderator Warning: This HOWTO will damage the ability of your TrueNAS appliance to properly maintain itself, will break the ability to replace failed drives, and may cause problems with upgrades and updates. TrueNAS is not designed to do this sort of partitioning, and the developers are not...

www.truenas.com

The post refers to using a pair of mirrored drives, but you can just use 1 (again, if you love losing your data and want to be set up to fail eventually).

 

[NelsonC]

Ok Thanks