NVIDIA Hardware RAID is detected by FreeNAS, but Volume inaccessible from GUI?

[FindingFilene]

Hi everybody, yes, I'm new to FreeNAS. A little about me: I'm a former poweruser who now is too busy managing tight finances and tight schedules to do as much home configuration as I'd like. This is a major reason why I stopped using a netbook with Lubuntu as my home file server. I now have a former ATX Desktop running FreeNAS off of--ideally--a set of mirrored boot USB sticks. (Yes, I have no clue if I did this right. More on that after the bigger issue.) I want to get files off the hard drives that were part of my former windows usage for this desktop. And it's looking harder and harder to access this.

I have an old Mobo-- an ASUS M472-E--which is running some old drives. Yes, I'm running 10 year old hardware. (Feel free to buy me something new? :3 ) 2 of those 40*C running drives are in a mirrored RAID. The mirrored RAID gets detected by FreeNAS during the boot processes and stuff, but it's entirely inaccessible to the web UI and only appears as the individual disks (ada1 and ada2). How do I import this mirrored RAID array data onto another disk I have in another a ZFS pool?

Furthermore, it looks like while I have two partitions on another drive, only one is accessible for importing into FreeNAS. :(

So here's everything:

1. I installed FreeNAS onto two identical USB sticks, and now I'm not sure if they work together or what.
2. My existing hardware RAID is detected in logs, and is listed as OPTIMAL, but I can't access this RAID for importing. It doesn't show up in the import disks tool.
3. I managed to import one partition of a disk, but I don't think the other partition is showing for import. How can I validate this?

Thank you all for your help.

Kindly,

~Filene
tzey/tzem/tzeirs

 

[Kris Moore]

Welcome!!

1. To mirror to USB sticks, you would install / boot from just one of them, then insert the other stick and mirror through the UI (Mirroring the Boot Pool | TrueNAS Documentation Hub )
2. For FreeNAS/TrueNAS, you can only import mirrored disks that are already formatted with a zpool. If this was a hardware raid originally, you'll want to create a fresh pool, using the UI, which will let you put them in mirrored mode. (Software raid good, hardware raid bad). This will destroy any contents already on the disks, so make sure you have backups of anything you want to keep on there.
3. Don't import - Make a fresh pool using both whole disks to do it properly. (ZFS Pools | TrueNAS Documentation Hub )

 

[jgreco]

In general, hardware RAID controllers lack either a good enough driver or good enough hardware to tolerate the beating that ZFS is going to hand down.

Please refer to the article

https://www.truenas.com/community/t...s-and-why-cant-i-use-a-raid-controller.81931/

for why you need to ditch the hardware RAID controller.

 

[FindingFilene]

Isn't there some means by which I can access the hardware raid just so I can remove the files from it only once? Must I boot into another OS to do this migration to a non-NTFS disk WITHOUT raid, JUST so I can do this original migration of importing the disk in FreeNAS to ZFS drives? Does this make sense? Does the import disk tool work with source hardware RAID drives? Import Disk, not Import Pool, which can't detect this raid anyways.

Btw, Kris Moore, thank you for your full answer. I'll set up the mirroring and when I finally have the ability to access the backup data, I'll have a ZFS formatted pool to put it in. . jgreco, thank you for your reply.

 

[jgreco]

You haven't even told us what kind of "hardware raid" it is. Controllers vary widely in their compatibility, and even if it works, it's going to be hacky at best.

 

[HoneyBadger]

Searching for information on that board leads me to the ASUS K8N-E which is based on the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset - and searching from there seems to indicate that while the SATA controller is supported, the "RAID" component isn't.

You did say in your original post that you managed to import one partition - did it bring any files with it? If not, the fastest solution is to boot to another OS (its original one, most likely) and copy the data to a non-RAID disk; even a USB one. From there, import it to your ZFS pool in FreeNAS. Once you've compared the files to ensure everything is good (do this with a checksumming tool not just "are the files present?" if you value the data) then you're all set.

Re: your hardware in general though, do you have 8GB of RAM? FreeNAS/TrueNAS is an "appliance" more than an "OS" and it wants to have that much available for the services/middleware. Having less could be unhealthy.

 

[FindingFilene]

You haven't even told us what kind of "hardware raid" it is. Controllers vary widely in their compatibility, and even if it works, it's going to be hacky at best.

That's very astute, I'm not thinking here that there's a multitude of hardware RAIDs and requisite drivers. Thank you for telling me because I am one of those folk who often need to check the "Third Party Drivers" box in other versions of FOSS operating systems. FreeNAS supporting the library of drivers for a variety of hardware raids would be missing the point of using FreeNAS's software RAID & portability entirely. It does mean that importing from this RAID--even if detected--is going to mean more time for me. :(

Searching for information on that board leads me to the ASUS K8N-E which is based on the NVIDIA nForce3 chipset - and searching from there seems to indicate that while the SATA controller is supported, the "RAID" component isn't.

You did say in your original post that you managed to import one partition - did it bring any files with it? If not, the fastest solution is to boot to another OS (its original one, most likely) and copy the data to a non-RAID disk; even a USB one. From there, import it to your ZFS pool in FreeNAS. Once you've compared the files to ensure everything is good (do this with a checksumming tool not just "are the files present?" if you value the data) then you're all set.

Re: your hardware in general though, do you have 8GB of RAM? FreeNAS/TrueNAS is an "appliance" more than an "OS" and it wants to have that much available for the services/middleware. Having less could be unhealthy.

Thank you for your response, HoneyBadger. Can you provide the link to the part of FreeNAS that lets folk like me know if we can check if our chipset is supported, or what parts are supported?

I'm going to do the data migration off the RAID as you said. I don't know any checksumming tools, so feel free to mention some if I don't DuckDuckGo any websearches after your reply :3
Moore's Law:
And finally, yes--I have 8GB of RAM. Just barely.enough to run the OS. For now. Here's a sense of tech age: the most RAM this board can support is only 16GB. I'm seeing computers readily seeking 8 times what I have already TwT