SOLVED Unable to create new volume on fresh install: MiddlewareError: Unable to GPT format the disk "da0":

[Chupa0]

I have a fresh install of FreeNAS-11.1-RELEASE. I have 6 second hand SAS drives which I formatted using the utility within the SAS configuration at boot. An LSI SAS9211-8i running 20.00.04.00-IT

When I go to create my first and only volume on this machine I get the following error:

MiddlewareError: Unable to GPT format the disk "da0": gpart: geom 'da0': File exists
]

I am trying to follow this thread at seems to be the same issue: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/unable-to-gpt-format-the-disk.49362/

Here is what I have done with no success:

1. use diskinfo -v da0 to get my media size in sectors (all disks are the same; da0,1,2,3,4,5)
2. subtracted 2048 from that number for my seek value.
3. However when I went to run the first command I got an error:
   
   Code:

   [root@freenas ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=512 count=1000				 
   dd: /dev/da0: Invalid argument												 
   1+0 records in																 
   0+0 records out																 
   0 bytes transferred in 0.000060 secs (0 bytes/sec)							 
   [root@freenas ~]#									 
   

I have not moved past this part yet.

Some other useful info:

Code:

[root@freenas ~]# camcontrol devlist											
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS17>	at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,da0)		 
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS17>	at scbus0 target 1 lun 0 (pass1,da1)		 
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS1B>	at scbus0 target 2 lun 0 (pass2,da2)		 
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS17>	at scbus0 target 3 lun 0 (pass3,da3)		 
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS17>	at scbus0 target 4 lun 0 (pass4,da4)		 
<SEAGATE ST320004CLAR2000 BS17>	at scbus0 target 5 lun 0 (pass5,da5)		 
<SanDisk Cruzer Blade 1.00>		at scbus6 target 0 lun 0 (pass6,da6)	 

Code:

[root@freenas ~]# gpart show													
=>		35  3846920952  da3  GPT  (1.8T)									 
		 35  3846920952	   - free -  (1.8T)								 
																			   
=>	  40  15293360  da6  GPT  (7.3G)										 
	   40	  1024	1  bios-boot  (512K)									
	 1064  15292328	2  freebsd-zfs  (7.3G)								 
  15293392		 8	   - free -  (4.0K)									 
																			   
=>		35  3846920952  da0  GPT  (1.8T)									 
		 35  3846920952	   - free -  (1.8T)								 
																			 

I cant seem to run gpart destory as mentioned in the tread ether:

Code:

[root@freenas ~]# gpart destory -F da0										 
gpart: Unknown command: destory.	   
																		   

I am very lost. Any help or guidance of where to look would be helpful.

 

[wblock]

"destory" is not the same as "destroy".

 

[Chupa0]

"destory" is not the same as "destroy".

Woops! Gpart destroy worked well. Gpart show does not show any partitions after that. However I am still unable to create a new volume from FreeNAS interface. I get the same error.

 

[dlavigne]

Please post the full text of the error and any surrounding messages, now that gpart has no partitions.

 

[raidflex]

I had this same problem and the sector size on the SAS drives ended up being 520byte, which is what the old RAID must have setup. Use the following post there is a link to issue commands to the drive to low level format the sectors as 512byte.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-use-drives-with-abnormal-sector-sizes.51245/

 

[Chupa0]

I had this same problem and the sector size on the SAS drives ended up being 520byte, which is what the old RAID must have setup. Use the following post there is a link to issue commands to the drive to low level format the sectors as 512byte.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-use-drives-with-abnormal-sector-sizes.51245/

This appears to be my case as well. I am running though the guide from that page to resolve. I'll report back tomorrow. thanks!

 

[Chupa0]

That was it. Issue is resolved now! Thanks much!

 

[wblock]

For future readers: check disk sector size with diskinfo -v da0.