BUILD Odd HBA / boot USB behavior

[GrahamBB]

I'm in the throes of building out a 'play' server to test out things that I don't want to try on a system with live data.

It's a Dell R710, 8GB, SAS9211-8i cross flashed to IT mode with version 20.00.07.00-IT.

The oddity is that it will only show 5 of the 6 hard drives and insists on including the boot USB in the list of drives (see below).

I know I must be missing something obvious, but I can see what! I've checked connectors, the HBA is set to 'no boot devices' the drives all appear to connect into the backplane properly (been there, done that before :)), but I'm at a loss. I've set up a few similar systems (live) but have never observed anything like this.

Please point out the glaringly obvious so that I can bang my head on the desk......

Cheers

 

[Johnnie Black]

It's normal for the USB boot device to be listed, you'll want to disable SMART for that device though, or the SMART service won't start, as for the missing disk, does the HBA have bios? If yes is the disk listed there? If no bios swap backplanes with a different disk.

 

[GrahamBB]

Thanks for that. I actually searched for information on switching smart off on a USB and couldn't find anything.

It turns out I had not one, but two dead drives. Sorted that in the end, but FreeNAS will still only let me select 5 of the six drives in lists under 'Disks'. I'll keep slogging at it.
Cheers

 

[Johnnie Black]

I actually searched for information on switching smart off on a USB and couldn't find anything.

On the "view disks" page, the one from your screenshot, double click the flash drive and uncheck "enable SMART"

 

[Redcoat]

Are all the drives seen by the BIOS?

Could any of the drives have been used with a different OS previously?

If you swap drives, cables and ports around can you find a pattern that identifies a hardware issue with either a particular drive, cable, or port?