Single 250gb HDD - Doesnt show as disk in ZFS Volume Manager

[Ampedout]

Hello, this is my first post. I have been wanting to create my own NAS set up for a long time. I am now to the point where I am diving straight into it. I am happy to have joined the forums and look forward to getting help and getting more familiar with FreeNAS.

I am using a dual core APU setup with 4 gigs of ram on an Emachines box that I purchased last year and never used. I have an old 250gb HDD in it and I am running FreeNAS off of a 4gb Sandisc USB drive. I am COMPLETELY new to the NAS world and so far, I am having some trouble getting things set up.

I have ordered a 3tb WD Red HDD that should be here in the next couple of days. Until then, I assumed that I would get my feet wet with this 250gb drive. Then swap it out for the WD Red or use it in some other way.

My question is, I am assuming that I can just use FreeNAS with only one HDD, although, every guide shows using multiple. I am trying to set up a ZFS in Volume Manager but the disk does not show up. When I followed another guide, I believe that I set up the disk as an ACL of Unix. With User as Nobody and Group as Nogroup. I checked all 9 boxes under Mode.

I am using the latest 9.2 version of FreeNAS as well. Could someone lend a helping hand in getting my single drive set up? Shouldnt I be using ZFS so that I can add drives later into a single pool? I was thinking that perhaps I did not format the disk as ZFS, but I can not find a place to reformat the drive in case I did that wrong.

 

[cyberjock]

You should read the hardware requirements.. 8GB of ECC RAM is the minimum, which means you are probably going to have to build/buy a different computer.

 

[Ampedout]

I have 8 computers in the home. Any of which is an i5 or an i7 with 16gb or memory in each. SSD drives and mechanical in each. Mostly above 3tb. I encode video for a living and stream regularly. I have many computers to convert to the final device. I think you may have missed the question, seeing as the memory should not be preventing the drive from showing up in the Volume Manager.

I did not post what final device specs that I would be running it as. I am just using an old system to test the waters. Once I am familiar with a setup, I will then convert the system to a more dedicated hardware setup on my 4 hour UPS next to me network hardware in my AC cooled pantry downstairs.

 

[joeschmuck]

Well I have a few things to quickly say...
1) APUs have been known to have issues with FreeBSD which is what FreeNAS is based on, and I'm not saying that it you issue but it could be a factor.
2) You have an emachines computer and it's possible you may be lacking some driver that isn't part of FreeNAS or FreeBSD. I would try to run a copy of FreeBSD to see if your system operates properly.
3) Yes, you can physically create a ZFS single drive system and that's fine for testing however I wouldn't want that as my final system and you shouldn't ether because it will be slower, but I did answer your question.
4) Lastly, sometimes a hard drive will not be recognized if it were used in a RAID and it need to to be erased at the front and back of the drive sectors. I have not run into this problem in a long time and I don't know if the new Volume Manager accounts for this.

 

[cyberjock]

Ok. I'll grant you that your hardware is just for testing. But... you still have problems with <8GB of RAM. Services that should start won't because of insufficient RAM, you'll get errors(or no error at all), and otherwise have problems that are unexplainable. You'll go to certain webpages and they'll be blank, missing buttons, or missing information. In short, until you can meet the minimum requirements you really aren't doing yourself any favors with trying to experiment with FreeNAS.

Plus what Joe said above. You're really not doing yourself any favors with that hardware...

 

[joeschmuck]

I was going to toss in the low RAM issue but I thought you already covered it well. If the guy doesn't see all the postings here about having 8GB of RAM, well that is just too bad for him. I can't wait for the team to put in a clear warning message during installation for anyone having RAM below 7GB. I'm tossing in some shared video and any other possible thing that could eat away at the RAM resources.

 

[Ampedout]

Point taken on the ram. If it helps any, I threw in 16g of ECC DDR3. Now, that did not fix the issue of how to get my drive set up for ZFS File Manager. Is it possible to set up one drive for ZFS? How would I go about reformatting it for ZFS, if that is indeed what would need to be done. The problem being, over the last 5 days I have been following a number of guides and reading up on the wiki. I may have accidentally created a conflict of settings during this.

 

[enemy85]

I have been using a sapphire amd e350 APU for a while, with just 4gb non-ecc ram and 2x2tb mirrored hd. I know it was not proper freenas raccomended hw, but was just as learning/testing machine, and even if was really slow, it worked without big troubles. Maybe u have some of your hw is unsupported at all

 

[Ampedout]

Perhaps, I will start looking into that. I will setup a FreeNAS on another computer with the same hard drive. I'll post results in a few. Also, would it be a hardware compatibility issue if FreeNas shows the drive as a disk in the GUI? Also, I was able to set up a Volume. It shows as /mnt/test1. I have just not been able to see the drive in ZFS Volume Manager as well as not being able to enable CIFS in Services.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Ampedout]

On an i7 PC, I still can not see my disk in ZFS Volume Manager.

 

[joeschmuck]

Maybe your drive is bad? Also did you read my fourth comment?

 

[Ampedout]

About the RAM? If so, see my 5th comment. The drive works. I just tested by installing a Win7 on it. I was thinking that it may have something to do with the partitioning, formatting etc. Because I did zero-out the drive before I started the FreeNAS setup. This time, I am deleting the volume in windows 7 setup and not formatting it. I will try to see what FreeNAS sees from it in the GUI in a moment.

 

[gpsguy]

Did you install FreeNAS on the hard disk or a USB Flash drive, as recommended in the manual?

FreeNAS is an appliance and designed to run on a dedicated drive.

 

[Ampedout]

Okay, so removing any partitions and formats under the Windows 7 setup screen then resetting the FreeNAS to defaults allowed me to have my device shown in ZFS Volume Manager.

 

[Ampedout]

Question: Under the Volume Layout dropdown menu, what should I put in there if I am only running the single drive? Also, I will be adding a drive later to test things out as well.
Should I set it as Stripe or Spare?

 

[gpsguy]

Stripe