New FreeNAS Mini, cannot reformat disks after failed installation

[Michael Wenyon]

I have a brand new ixSystems FreeNAS Mini with 4x4TB Western Digital 'red' drives and all new hardware. As part of troubleshooting for an initial installation that was not working, I tried to reset it to the factory original settings using the option offered in the boot menu. After this the next boot did not give me the First Run Wizard, however, and ordinary Wizard use was from then on unable to complete setting up the system without failing: either the pool could not be adopted when run, or every other run seemed to offer to create a new pool, which failed. iXSystems Support then asked me to reinstall the system. When Wizard then also had the same result, they sent me a new little SSD with the system on it, but booting from that drive/system also had the same result.

At this stage I am unable to create a new pool either with the wizard or manually, the operation fails with a brief GUI error message (that I cannot copy) saying something about 'cannot format GPT disk' or 'cannot format ada0'. Going into the disk list and choosing 'Wipe' also fails.

Can anyone here please suggest what can I do to either get the Wizard to work as the disks are now or to reformat my disks, perhaps externally with another computer for example?

[In case you are wondering, I have read the manual, and I am posting here because iXSystems support have told me it is not a 'hardware problem' and suggested I seek advice from other users here.]

 

[depasseg]

So the system now works, but the data disks can't be formatted. Is that accurate?

Have the drives ever been used anywhere else?

 

[gpsguy]

Welcome to the forums! Sorry to hear that you are having all these problems with a newly purchased machine.

I'd try wiping the disks with DBAN (www.dban.org). Use the quick option. It'll take a few hours, but after running it, the disks will be blank.

Once that's done, try again.

 

[Michael Wenyon]

So the system now works, but the data disks can't be formatted. Is that accurate?

Have the drives ever been used anywhere else?

Yes, I think the system works. Or at least I only know of the problem formating the disks. The GUI works, for example.

The disks were brand new when I put them in the Mini.

Thank you for your help.

 

[Michael Wenyon]

This was resolved by iXsystems support logging into my desktop remotely, then connecting by the Java SSH viewer application to the NAS and detaching/deleting the drives using command line entries run on the NAS.