FreeNAS 9.3 shows only 9 disks

[Juha Leivo]

Hi

I've been hitting my head to the wall for last three days. In FreeNAS 9.2 I see all 11 of my disks, in FreeNAS 9.3 I see only 9 disks, no matter what I do. If I add another RAID controller and move 2 disks to that, I still see only 9 disks, now I just lost couple from another controller.
It seems no matter what I do, the total amount stays in 9 drives in FreeNAS 9.3. Any ideas how to solve this?

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi

I've been hitting my head to the wall for last three days. In FreeNAS 9.2 I see all 11 of my disks, in FreeNAS 9.3 I see only 9 disks, no matter what I do. If I add another RAID controller and move 2 disks to that, I still see only 9 disks, now I just lost couple from another controller.
It seems no matter what I do, the total amount stays in 9 drives in FreeNAS 9.3. Any ideas how to solve this?

That's a red flag.

Exact hardware, please (as required by the forum rules, by the way).

 

[Juha Leivo]

That's a red flag.

Exact hardware, please (as required by the forum rules, by the way).

My bad!Thank you for correcting me.

So, current build is made from salvage parts to test limits & functionality with ESXi 5.5

CPU: Intel Q6600
RAM: Kingston 8 GB RAM, DDR2 800MHz.
Motherboard: Intel Dp35DP
GPU: ATI 3450 low profile
Network: Using integrated 1Gbps
Storage setup:
Using only motherboards integrated SATA-connects + 1 Chinese unknown SATA port extender
3x 2TB WD, 2x 1.5TB Toshiba, 1x128GB Samsung SSD
Then for limit testing
80 GB intel SSD, 160 GB Hitachi SATA, 2x 80GB WD SATA aaaand since I had one 160GB IDE.

Only 9 of these will be shown in lastest version of FreeNAS 9.3. In FreeNAS-9.2.1-RELEASE-x86 (bd35c86) all of them are shown.
I even tried adding a PCI SATA controller and moving couple of drives behind it. Same effect, only 9 drives are visible, though it did change which 9 drives were visible.

 

[gpsguy]

My guess, is that your "Chinese unknown SATA port extender" is the root of the problem.

You'd be better off with a LSI HBA. We highly recommend the IBM M1015, about $115 USD on eBay, flashed to IT mode. You'd also need breakout cables to go with it.

 

[Juha Leivo]

My guess, is that your "Chinese unknown SATA port extender" is the root of the problem.

You'd be better off with a LSI HBA. We highly recommend the IBM M1015, about $115 USD on eBay, flashed to IT mode. You'd also need breakout cables to go with it.

I think I excluded that possibility with using two different port extenders and by using that additional PCI SATA card. What ever drive is number 10 it won't be found. Regardless of the port it is in and again in 9.2 this all works.

- Leivo

 

[jgreco]

SATA port multipliers and cheap SATA ports are sometimes problematic, and it may be that some driver change or modification broke it for you.

Are we talking SATA port multiplier here, or just a PCIe card with some SATA ports on it?

 

[Juha Leivo]

Hi

SATA port multipliers and cheap SATA ports are sometimes problematic, and it may be that some driver change or modification broke it for you.

Are we talking SATA port multiplier here, or just a PCIe card with some SATA ports on it?

I mean with Port Extender == SATA port multiplier. When I added a PCI SATA card and moved two of the missing drives from SATA port multiplier to that card I lost two other drives from that multiplier (those were the drives 10 and 11) and the total amount of drives remained at 9.

- Leivo

 

[jgreco]

We already know that SATA port multipliers are dodgy hardware. You can try submitting a bug report but I wouldn't expect to see it get any significant amount of love.

 

[cyberjock]

SATA port multipliers are just evil. Pure, unadulterated, evil. They should be avoided at any and all costs.

I'd bet money if you got rid of them you'd find things suddenly working just fine. Well, as fine as can be expected for that hardware (it's definitely not "recommended" hardware).

 

[jgreco]

 

[jgreco]

Always have these obscure movie references popping into my head...

 

[Juha Leivo]

Thanks guys.

I was testing limits and it seems that test equipment doesn't work well in testing limits.

 

[jgreco]

s/test equipment/dodgy test equipment/

ftfy