Occupying M2 slot on the motherboard with SATA SSD makes another HDD to go offline?

[scotrod]

This one is strange. My setup currently is:
2x4tb HDDs
2x3tb HDDs
1x120gb boot SSD
7700k
Z270 Extreme4

Today I decided to add another M2 (SATA, not NVME) 240gb SSD - by installing it in my M2 slot. After installing and powering up the machine, I found out that one of my drives is not present on the machine (the new SSD however is):

Critical
Pool Vault state is DEGRADED: One or more devices could not be used because the label is missing or invalid. Sufficient replicas exist for the pool to continue functioning in a degraded state.
The following devices are not healthy:
Disk ST3000DM008-2DM166 Z504YCW7 is UNAVAIL

After opening the machine, removing the new SSD and booting up the machine again, I could see my "gone" HDD once again. After installing the SSD in the M2 slot, and checking all the power and SATA cables, the HDD (same one) was again gone offline, hence the same error.

I decided to install the M2 SSD to another M2 slot on the motherboard - this time, not one but two drives went offline, taking my whole pool down. After removing the SSD, the two HDDs went online and my pool is currently healthy.

Question is, WTF? How is occupying one M2 slot making one HDD go offline, and occupying another one make TWO HDDs go away as well? I honestly have no idea where to start to troubleshoot this. Any suggestions?

 

[artlessknave]

some motherboards work exactly like this.
as you haven't posted your hardware, a forum requirement, we have no way to look up any information.
you are asking about motherboard specific behavior without saying *which* motherboard.

 

[Thanassos]

What motherboard do you have? Check the manual, many motherboards only support X amount of SATA lanes and when you populate a SATA drive into a M.2 slot it will disable some of the onboard SATA ports.

 

[scotrod]

some motherboards work exactly like this.
as you haven't posted your hardware, a forum requirement, we have no way to look up any information.
you are asking about motherboard specific behavior without saying *which* motherboard.

You are right, missed the most important one: Z270 Extreme4

 

[artlessknave]

*M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
M2_2, SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

this is one of the reasons gaming mobo's are highly recommended against. they put hardware emphasis in areas that are completely irelevant for a server.
also, realtek NIC is ewww.

 

[scotrod]

*M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.
M2_2, SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

this is one of the reasons gaming mobo's are highly recommended against. they put hardware emphasis in areas that are completely irelevant for a server.
also, realtek NIC is ewww.

Working with whatever I have brother. I have a PCIE adapter for both NVME and M2 SATA... I will try if I can do the trick with it. Also, what's the thing with the realtek NIC?

 

[scotrod]

What motherboard do you have? Check the manual, many motherboards only support X amount of SATA lanes and when you populate a SATA drive into a M.2 slot it will disable some of the onboard SATA ports.

Yep, that was the exact reason! Description updated BTW.
I tried placing PCIE adapter for both NVME and M2 SATA drives (PCEM2-DC PCIe NVMe+SATA M.2 adapter) I wasn't sure if this is going to work due to driver issues or whatever as I read that TrueNAS needs direct access to the disks. Drive is now visible and I'm running SMART tests. If things are OK, this will be my boot drive as I need to replace it.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

this is one of the reasons gaming mobo's are highly recommended against. they put hardware emphasis in areas that are completely irelevant for a server.

Agree. But even with "official server" mainboards (I swear by Supermicro) in case you have a dual NVMe/SATA M.2 slot on the mainboard, most of the times using that for a SATA SSD disables one of the SATA ports, because "options". They could have made that slot NVMe only but didn't.

Conclusion: read your MB documentation.

 

[sretalla]

Also, what's the thing with the realtek NIC?

Is my Realtek ethernet really that bad?

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