4 T Drives only show as 1.6T

[zmlman]

I retired 10 of my 4T drives from FressNAS and re-purposed them for Windows. I didnt do anything about those retired drives but directly connected them into Win2016 server. I was trying to format them under Windows.

But for some reason, all of those 10 drives showing only as 1.6T. I know normally larger Drives has their limitation on Windows, has to convert to GPT. but no matter what I do, they are only showing as 1.6T, I was trying to use SeagateTools for Dos to reset those drives, but no success.

What did FreeNAS do to those drives? A similar issue happened to my FreeNAS boot USB drive another day, after removing that Boot USB, it no longer accessible, showing as "no media"......

Help please.

 

[BigDave]

Which version of Windows are you working with and what brand of Hard Drives?
More details are required please.

Also as this is really not a FreeNAS issue, would a Mod please move this to appropriate section.
@Ericloewe

 

[zmlman]

Which version of Windows are you working with and what brand of Hard Drives?
More details are required please.

Also as this is really not a FreeNAS issue, would a Mod please move this to appropriate section.
@Ericloewe

Seagate drives and FressNAS 11.1.

I think it is FreeNAS issue, I want to know how FreeNAS formatted the drives while I was creating data set on it. (same as "what did it do to USB boot drives"), I am not sure if this is something to do with Ver11, on Ver9, drives can be retired and re-used in Windows, it does not make any sense all 10 of my 4T drives all showing as 1.6T under windows and Linux, even SAS controller and SATA controller are reading them as 1.6T.

 

[Chris Moore]

What did FreeNAS do to those drives?

FreeNAS didn't do anything. I have taken 4TB drives to FreeNAS and back many times. It is absolutely nothing to do with FreeNAS.
It is more likely a drive controller issue. What controller are you connecting the drives through?

 

[Chris Moore]

I think it is FreeNAS issue, cus I want to know how FreeNAS formatted the drives

cus is not a word. Please use proper language so that others can understand what you are trying to say, even if what you are trying to say makes no sense.

 

[zmlman]

FreeNAS didn't do anything. I have taken 4TB drives to FreeNAS and back many times. It is absolutely nothing to do with FreeNAS.
It is more likely a drive controller issue. What controller are you connecting the drives through?

LSI logic sas controller, i dont think it gets anything to do with this controller, I have other 4t drives removed from freenas v9, they all ok to be read on this server with full capacity.

 

[Chris Moore]

LSI logic sas controller, i don't think it gets anything to do with this controller, I have other 4t drives removed from freenas v9, they all ok to be read on this server with full capacity.

What about SAS expanders? Is there anything between the drive and the server that might modify the function of the drive? All FreeNAS does is create two GUID partitions. One for the swap space and one for the data. The first, for swap, should be 2MB and the second should fill the remainder of the drive. Delete them and your drive should be ready to partition and format in Windows. I have done that with 2TB, 4TB and 6TB drives many times using every version of FreeNAS from 9.something to the latest. FreeNAS doesn't do anything special to the drives.

 

[zmlman]

They are all directly attached to server.

One more thing I forgot mentioning is that all those drives now showing under windows as "Read only" . I will try more Seagate tools to see if there is anything helpful.

 

[Redcoat]

I would try Partition Magic for this issue.

 

[zmlman]

I would try Partition Magic for this issue.

That was one of my 3rd party utilities that I tried on, no luck at all, showing the same size as 1.6T

 

[kdragon75]

even if what you are trying to say makes no sense.

:D

LSI logic sas controller

Does this LSI have a model number?

i don't think it gets anything

Neither do I.

4t drives

You Mean 4TB?

I want to know how FreeNAS formatted the drives while I was creating data set on it.

It created a (roughly using marketing math) 3.8TB zfs partition using a GPT partition table and then a swap partition with the last 2GB

 

[sretalla]

showing the same size as 1.6T

Are you able to see the drive information in the BIOS/setup of the LSI card? (and what size does it show, if our thoughts are that Windows is the problem, this would eliminate/confirm that)

 

[zmlman]

Are you able to see the drive information in the BIOS/setup of the LSI card? (and what size does it show, if our thoughts are that Windows is the problem, this would eliminate/confirm that)

YES, In SAS or SATA controller setup, they all show as 1.6T as full capacity....
Within the same Windows server, it can read other larger drives 4T, 6T, 10T removed from older version of FreeNAS with full capacity.

 

[kdragon75]

Does this LSI have a model number?

 

[sretalla]

Do you have a model number of the drives? maybe we can look at that angle with some known issues with that model and the firmware version of the LSI? ... also, make sure to get to @kdragon75 's question.

 

[zmlman]

LSI 2308.

Why those drives now showing as "read only" after being used in FreeNAS? Because of zfs? so next time before I removing any drive from zfs, I have to format them back to MBR first, then convert to GPT under Windows?

 

[kdragon75]

LSI 2308.

Why those drives now showing as "read only" after being used in FreeNAS? Because of zfs? so next time before I removing any drive from zfs, I have to format them back to MBR first, then convert to GPT under Windows?

You could use the wipe function in the gui, or use dd or sgformat, or gpart and delete all the partitions, etc... As for why there "read only" I don't know. Can you provide a screenshot of this?
Loks like the LSI 2308 is SAS-2 and has no issues with larger drives.

 

[zmlman]

You could use the wipe function in the gui, or use dd or sgformat, or gpart and delete all the partitions, etc... As for why there "read only" I don't know. Can you provide a screenshot of this?
Loks like the LSI 2308 is SAS-2 and has no issues with larger drives.

As we agreed, "it gets nothing to do with SAS card". I have successfully tried all those "wipe, dd...." and they dont make any difference. I have to open the server box later to see if my coworker did anything wrong with cable connections. Screenshot can be provided later

 

[Chris Moore]

None of this makes any sense and it's not a result of anything that FreeNAS or ZFS did. I've handled hundreds of drives among more than a dozen different servers and never seen anything like that.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Stux]

1.6TB sounds like a large format incompatibility. Iirc early LSI sas1 cards had this issue, which is why people are bringing it up

Possible it’s a jumper setting on the disks.