SOLVED FreeNAS Mini Won't See Drives

[Lady Gaia]

I finally decided to jump into the FreeNAS world and thought I'd do it right: I bought an ixSystems FreeNAS Mini and 4x Western Digital RED 3TB drives. Once I had everything I needed* I mounted the drives in trays, gently but firmly slid them into place, connected everything, and turned it on.

The system boots fine but none of the drives are recognized. The wizard sees no storage. The rest of the UI agrees. Even booting into BIOS shows no drives connected. Any suggested troubleshooting steps? I did try to sign up at ixSystems' site for support but the verification email they claimed to have sent never arrived. I wrote their support email address and haven't heard back, but admittedly I wrote on Saturday and it's still early the following Monday.

* part of "getting everything I needed" was the shock that I'd need a VGA display. What year is this? My first attempt was to use a VGA-to-HDMI converter but it doesn't work for the text modes the FreeNAS uses, so that's going back to Amazon. Time is ticking before the FreeNAS Mini goes back as well.

 

[depasseg]

gently but firmly slid them into place

They have a locking handle. Did you open the handle, slide them in and then close the handle? Closing the handle allows the drives to connect properly.
You shouldn't need a display, that's what the ipmi port is for. You can view the display/console remotely using a web browser on a different machine.

 

[m0nkey_]

The FreeNAS Mini has an IPMI you can use to get to the console, all without plugging in a monitor. It should get a DHCP address so you'll have to look at your router to find out what IP was assigned. Default user/pass should be admin/admin.

It does seem odd that no drives are detected. If you can SSH into FreeNAS, run the following command: camcontrol devlist

This should list all your drives attached. Copy/paste that into this thread using the [ code ] tags.

 

[Lady Gaia]

The Quick Start Guide included with the unit stated the VGA display and USB keyboard as absolute requirements for setup, so I assumed that was accurate. I'm glad to hear it isn't! The fact that it appears to require Java to work around is unfortunate, but at least that gives me other options.

The drive locking handles are indeed back in the appropriate position. I've also tried connecting an individual drive to another SATA device and it comes right up. I tried seating just that one confirmed drive in the bottom-most bay so I can get a clear view of it connecting, and all looks well. It's like there's no power to the drives.

"sudo camcontrol devlist" results in the following:

Code:

<16GB SATA Flash Drive SFDK002A>   at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (ada0,pass0)
<Marvell Console 1.01>             at scbus9 target 0 lun 0 (pass1)

 

[m0nkey_]

That does indeed seem odd. When you power on the Mini, can you hear your drives spinning up? If you do, then try re-seating the SATA cables. If you don't hear the drives, try re-seating the power cables. If that doesn't work, then it's likely you got a faulty unit and need to RMA.

 

[Lady Gaia]

I wasn't sure I'd be able to distinguish the sound of the drives spinning up from the fan. Are they quite distinct? I'll put my ear to the front of the unit and listen closely when I get home this evening.

Are there normally lights on the front of the drive bays when starting up? It looks like there should be but there are no cables to the drives. Presumably power for these comes from the rails? In any case there's no light at all in the drive cage when powering up, just the system lights.

 

[wblock]

The Quick Start Guide included with the unit stated the VGA display and USB keyboard as absolute requirements for setup, so I assumed that was accurate. I'm glad to hear it isn't!

It used to be accurate... a new QSG is being prepared. Sorry about that.

 

[Lady Gaia]

I couldn't hear anything I could attribute to the drives spinning up, so that's a working theory. Sounds like an RMA or Amazon return situation, which is disappointing.

 

[wblock]

Don't give up yet. I tried and failed to find a picture of the power cable to the drives, but that's where I'd look. Or at the other end, where that goes to the power supply.

PM me if you can't get through to support, and I will do what I can to get you in contact.

 

[Lady Gaia]

I appreciate the offer. On the other hand, I'd like to make sure I don't get stuck with a system that has flaky cabling, either. I have gotten one inquiry from support and will see where that goes this week. If there's not a simple solution I'd rather swap for a unit that works out of the box.

 

[Lady Gaia]

I was very impressed with iXsystems' willingness to correspond and eventually to take a look in person (since they're nearby.) Everything is now up and running normally. Now to transfer a terabyte or so of data from various other locations...

Ultimately I'm not 100% clear whether it was ensuring that all cables were snugly in place or learning the recommended approach to seating drives that made the difference. I do think the Getting Started guide should spend a page addressing the drive bays. When I originally got the system it was completely unclear how the removal mechanism worked and I had to look it up online. The recommended procedure for seating drives is likewise not obvious.

 

[m0nkey_]

Good to hear everything worked out. Welcome to FreeNAS!

 

[IDtheTarget]

@wblock, is the updated Quick Start Guide on the site? I'm looking to buy the Mini XL and don't want to have similar issues after spending that kind of cash. Thanks!

 

[wblock]

Not yet, although a bunch of people have worked on it. I put in an inquiry, and would expect we would have the PDF up before the printed version. If you have trouble with it, phone or email support is available, and if you can't get help, please let me know and I'll set up some kind of contact. The old doc didn't say anything useful about putting the trays into the slots, and although we only have a little bit more about that in the new version, it's more accurate and easier to understand.

 

[wblock]

Whoops, had a new version, but it was the wrong one, working on fixing it now. Sorry for the delay.

 

[wblock]

Finally! Updated FreeNAS Mini Quick Start Guide.

 

[Lady Gaia]

It's definitely an improvement. Eliminating the spurious VGA requirement will presumably save new adopters some headaches down the road (although browser support for Java is also becoming something of a legacy technology as well.)

The single sentence regarding mounting drive bays is at least a clue, so hopefully that also improves the experience. In practice, though, I had to search online to find anything about how to remove the drive bays in the first place. It wouldn't hurt to have a quick illustration of how the release and mounting mechanisms work.

 

[wblock]

I agree about drive photos or diagrams, and did suggest them (along with my own awesome MS-Paint-quality drawings), but one of the major concerns in this document and other setup documents was keeping them as short as possible so they do not overwhelm the new user. It's something I hope to do for the next revision.

 

[Ericloewe]

(although browser support for Java is also becoming something of a legacy technology as well.)

Not aure about ASRock, but Supermicro actually downloads a java "executable" that is run outside the browser, so that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[wblock]

Except it means you have to have Java installed on the computer, which can be problematic in several ways.

A Javascript version could run in the browser without requiring anything more.