Temporary 5th 3.5" drive in TrueNAS Mini E for upgrading?

[JetForMe]

I just got a bunch of 8 TB drives to replace the 4 TB drives in my Mini E. I'd love to be able to replace the drives with redundancy, which would mean finding a way to attach a 5th drive. I considered using a USB-SATA cable I have here, but it's going to be a slow enough process as it is.

I cracked open the case and see what appears to be spare power and eSATA ports. I'm wondering, if I get the right cables, can I plug in my 5th drive to these for the upgrade process?

Sorry for the blurry photos. I was in an awkward position and couldn't get it to focus on the right thing.

 

[sretalla]

Yep, looks like you'd just need a molex to SATA power adapter and a SATA cable and you're in business.

The power supply probably won't have an issue with it as long as it's only a short-term thing (and the case will be open for additional cooling... you might want to watch airflow over the drives though as you'll be giving them all a workout).

 

[Constantin]

Alternative: SATA-eSATA cable and one of those external hard drive toasters. Just plug it in (SATA) and you’re done.

 

[JetForMe]

Yep, looks like you'd just need a molex to SATA power adapter and a SATA cable and you're in business.

The power supply probably won't have an issue with it as long as it's only a short-term thing (and the case will be open for additional cooling... you might want to watch airflow over the drives though as you'll be giving them all a workout).

Cool, I'll try this. Looking at the thermal design, though, I think it's not good to run it with the enclosure open. That enclosure looks to be the only way to force air over the drives. Otherwise the rear exhaust fan is pulling in replacement air from all around, instead of through the front and over the drives.

 

[Constantin]

I found that fan to be fairly useless in my XL+. The upper 2 drives stewed in their own juices.

You could consider setting up a big room fan next to the thing and blowing a lot of air over the CPU, drives, and so on with both side covers off.

 

[JetForMe]

Yeah, I just did some basic tests with tissue paper. At idle there's not much going on, and there's a large opening below the drive stack that makes it worse. I may actually cover up most of that opening (it serves fresh air over the CPU). I may even put a bigger fan in there, although I'm reluctant to make it louder. Hopefully that fan throttles up when it's busy.

I'll definitely point a fan at the thing while I'm replacing the drives.

 

[JetForMe]

Does anyone know if I can safely hot-swap the temporary drive plugged into a SATA port?

 

[JetForMe]

Hmm. So I powered everything down, added my drive, powered it all back up. I can hear the drive spin, but I don't see it in the UI at all. Do I need to do something to enable another drive? I see my four storage drives, the read & write caches, and the boot drive, but not my new one.

 

[Constantin]

It should be there if it’s plugged into SATA and power. See the disks menu.

 

[JetForMe]

Alas, it's not. Doesn't show up in /dev, either, afaict.

Code:

freenas% ls -l /dev/ada*
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x5a Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada0
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x5e Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada0p1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x60 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada0p2
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x5c Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x62 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada1p1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x64 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada1p2
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x82 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada2
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x8c Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada2p1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x8e Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada2p2
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x84 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada3
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x90 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada3p1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x92 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada3p2
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x88 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada4
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x94 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada5
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x96 Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada6
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x9c Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada6p1
crw-r-----  1 root  operator  0x9e Jun  3 15:27 /dev/ada6p2
freenas%

 

[JetForMe]

I tried a different cable and the other SATA port, no luck. Rebooting with the new cable to see if that helps.

Code:

freenas% sudo camcontrol devlist
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada1)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,ada2)
<WDC WD40EFRX-68N32N0 82.00A82>    at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (pass3,ada3)
<Micron 5200 MTFDDAK480TDC D1MU020>  at scbus4 target 0 lun 0 (pass4,ada4)
<Micron 5200 MTFDDAK480TDC D1MU020>  at scbus5 target 0 lun 0 (pass5,ada5)
<AHCI SGPIO Enclosure 2.00 0001>   at scbus6 target 0 lun 0 (pass6,ses0)
<16GB SATA Flash Drive SFDK004A>   at scbus7 target 0 lun 0 (pass7,ada6)
<AHCI SGPIO Enclosure 2.00 0001>   at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (pass8,ses1)
freenas%

 

[Constantin]

Is this perhaps a BIOS issue where some SATA ports have been disabled?

 

[JetForMe]

I'm wondering if it's something like that. Any idea how to get to the BIOS on a Mini E?

 

[Constantin]

F2 or Del during boot. Then look through the disk-related menus to see if various controllers are enabled or not. I seem to recall some issues with my board where some SATA ports could be booted from, others not, enabling or disabling certain ports based on the chip feeding them, and so on.

 

[JetForMe]

This is a TrueNAS Mini-E. No display. Well, it might have a VGA port (lulz). Dunno how I'm gonna connect to that. Huh, it has an IPMI port, which I've never heard about until now. No idea how to use it, but it provides access to the BIOS.

 

[JetForMe]

My to my surprise, I was able to log into the IPMI web interface, and get a simulated KVM setup. I was able to get into the BIOS, and dig around a bit, and found this:

Even the BIOS only currently sees these SATA devices. The selected Config 3 reflects those SATA ports. The Intel Atom C3338 has 10 SATA ports, there are nine ports on the board that I can see, only one is actually labeled (SATA_12, and it has a neat little 1" drive plugged into it). I don't see a way to turn on the other ports :(

 

[JetForMe]

Oh! There's a Config 4, but I don't know what it is.

 

[JetForMe]

I'm wondering if iXSystems had a special version of the BIOS commissioned that doesn't allow all the SATA ports to be enabled.

 

[Redcoat]

Sounds like you need to get the asrock manual for your motherboard from their website - also contact ixsystems for tech info on the available ports and associated configurations if you can’t find what the asrock manual says should be there.

 

[Etorix]

If nothing else works, you could temporarily remove the two Micron drives (L2ARC and SLOG?) and use their SATA ports.

The shenanigans of the C3558D4I-4L are discussed here, but a C3338 is even more limited than a C3558. What is the motherboard?