New install boot-pool moves from SSD to Hard drive automatically

[Mazeman]

Hello all, I have been a FreeNas user for many years. I was running FreeNas on my Intel Atom in a X10SL7-F with 16gb ram and 8x3tb drives in a 2 parity config, booting from a 4gb thumb drive.

Recently I decided to play with TrueNas, as I didn't need anything on that storage anymore. The 6 3tb drives are on the LSI controller ports, and I added a 250 GB EVO 850 to a 6gbps sata port. I reformatted the usb thumbdrive with the latest TrueNas and booted up. The installer saw everything and I installed to the SSD only, including a cache. After rebooting and removing the thumbdrive, TrueNas starts up as expected, but when I go to Drives it shows one of the 3tb drives as the "boot-pool" and won't let me add it to a new pool. Additionally, the SSD is no longer the boot drive. When going to the storage setting and trying to attach the SSD to the boot pool it tells me it's not big enough.

I reinstalled TrueNas via the thumbdrive one more time, but this time without the hard drives connected. Under drives I see the SSD in the boot pool, but after shutting down and adding the 6x 3tb the boot-pool moves to one of the drives again.

This is extremely frustrating, I can't imagine a scenario where someone would want this. I have done a ton of searches for this and I haven't found anyone else seeing this behavior.

What am I missing? TIA.

 

[sretalla]

I installed to the SSD only, including a cache

Sounds wrong... did you mean swap rather than cache?

Under drives I see the SSD in the boot pool, but after shutting down and adding the 6x 3tb the boot-pool moves to one of the drives again.

Or have you actually installed to both the SSD and one of the HDDs in Mirror during the install.

Go to System | Boot | Actions | Boot Pool Status and see if you have two drives in a mirrored boot pool.

Otherwise, you'll need to wipe that disk (maybe easier in another system, but preferably Unix/Linux) and then have another go.

 

[Mazeman]

Yes swap, sorry! After the boot pool moves the SSD is no longer part of the boot-pool, it is fully available to a new pool. So what you are saying is that the old install might be messing with it? I should be able to boot up a portable Linux and format them. I'll let you know.

 

[Mazeman]

Thank you @sretalla for the advice to wipe the drives, that was the trick for me. I would love to see the option on install to wipe the drives that will not be part of the boot-pool, or at least ask before setting up a random old drive as the new boot-pool. As these were encrypted drives from a previous setup, I am surprised with how this happened, I had imagined that these drives would have looked unreadable, but obviously I was wrong!