New to FreeNAS... Will my old computer suffice?

[drew_p13]

Hey all,

So I'm brand new to FreeNAS. I bought a pair of WD Red 3TB NAS drives to throw in my old gaming build to create a server for storing pictures and videos, mainly. I was also planning on using the Plex plugin to run a media server.

I got the server up and running, but as soon as I move any data over I get a lot of errors. From my research so far, it appears as if one of my drives is faulty, and I just wanted to post here to make sure that it's not any of my other hardware.

CPU: AMD FX-8320
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0
RAM: Kingston Black 8GB (2 x 4GB, DDR3-1600, CAS 9, non-ECC)
Boot Drive: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
Storage Drives: 2 x Western Digital Red 3TB NAS
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 270
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze

 

[styno]

Can you provide the SMART stats from both disks?

 

[NAS-Plus]

I can certainly understand you wanting to re-purpose existing hardware. You mentioned that it was a gaming rig. The ideal hardware for a gaming rig and a FreeNAS server are often different. Asus is not on the recommended list of motherboards. Intel processors are preferred over AMD. ECC memory is preferred over non-ECC. Since video is not a requirement on most FreeNAS servers the basic embedded motherboard video is often used in lieu of an external video card.

There is a very helpful pdf document found here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12

 

[Chris Moore]

I got the server up and running, but as soon as I move any data over I get a lot of errors. From my research so far, it appears as if one of my drives is faulty, and I just wanted to post here to make sure that it's not any of my other hardware.

There is also this resource for troubleshooting drives:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...bleshooting-guide-all-versions-of-freenas.17/
and
this resource about the suggested burn-in testing for the system:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.38/
and
you could be having a problem with the hardware you are using because of the things @NAS-Plus said.
Not all hardware is fully supported. It is Unix after all.

 

[NAS-Plus]

Correction. I do see that some AMD processors are supported via this document:
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/hardware.html

 

[wblock]

I got the server up and running, but as soon as I move any data over I get a lot of errors.

What sort of errors, specifically?

 

[drew_p13]

What sort of errors, specifically?

CAM status: Uncorrectable parity/CRC error

 

[SweetAndLow]

Correction. I do see that some AMD processors are supported via this document:
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/hardware.html

The cpu is just fine it's the motherboards that are usually cheap and poorly supported.

 

[KrisBee]

CAM status: Uncorrectable parity/CRC error

On a brand new drive, after zpool creation? Power down, and check/reconnect SATA cable.

 

[Stux]

CRC errors on drive IO are most often caused by faulty SATA cables

Your system will probably be fine for a small NAS btw.

 

[drew_p13]

On a brand new drive, after zpool creation? Power down, and check/reconnect SATA cable.

Tried new SATA cable and on a new motherboard port and still getting errors.

 

[drew_p13]

CRC errors on drive IO are most often caused by faulty SATA cables

Your system will probably be fine for a small NAS btw.

Tried a new SATA cable on new SATA port and still getting errors.

 

[Redcoat]

Swap the drives over on the SATA cables and see if problem stays with the drives or the cables./

 

[drew_p13]

Swap the drives over on the SATA cables and see if problem stays with the drives or the cables./

I know it's probably counter intuitive to trouble shooting the issue, but I decided to wipe the drives, install Windows 10 and run Western Digital's disk checking utility. I will post again with any errors it finds.

 

[Chris Moore]

I decided to wipe the drives, install Windows 10 and run Western Digital's disk checking utility. I will post again with any errors it finds.

I have tested drives with the WD utility and had them pass but they still don't work properly in FreeNAS. The WD utility has different thresholds for what is acceptable.
You could very easily have a hardware problem (incompatibility) in the system board. Did you run any of the burn-in testing that I suggested to you previously?

 

[drew_p13]

I have tested drives with the WD utility and had them pass but they still don't work properly in FreeNAS. The WD utility has different thresholds for what is acceptable.
You could very easily have a hardware problem (incompatibility) in the system board. Did you run any of the burn-in testing that I suggested to you previously?

I had both of my drives pass the extended tests with the WD utility, but after installing FreeNAS 11 I got the same CAM status: Uncorrectable parity/CRC errors that I had before, this time even before I setup a volume.

I did not run the burn in tests, I'm going to assume that there is a hardware incompatibility. A friend suggested that I just run a hardware RAID card and use Windows, so I think that's what I'm going to do. Thanks anyways!

 

[KrisBee]

I had both of my drives pass the extended tests with the WD utility, but after installing FreeNAS 11 I got the same CAM status: Uncorrectable parity/CRC errors that I had before, this time even before I setup a volume.

I did not run the burn in tests, I'm going to assume that there is a hardware incompatibility. A friend suggested that I just run a hardware RAID card and use Windows, so I think that's what I'm going to do. Thanks anyways!

Linux software RAID would save money on a hardware RAID card - have a look at "Open Media Vault" , it even has a zfs plugin.

 

[brando56894]

it's the motherboards that are usually cheap and poorly supported.

You aren't kidding! I haven't bought anything Asus in a while and now I'm kind of regretting it. My X99-WS/IPMI has firmware from 2015, which makes it inaccessible in the latest Java update, once that's bypassed the damn WebUI will randomly crash, making it inaccessible and the only way to get it to work is to pull the plug from the wall so that the BMC reboots. I contacted their support team at the end of September regarding this and they had no idea what I was talking about (had no idea what the IPMI/BMC was) and kept directing me to UEFI firmware updates. Once I corrected them they said "we're looking into it" and that was over a month ago. Other than that, I've had no issues with it though.

 

[LIGISTX]

Linux software RAID would save money on a hardware RAID card - have a look at "Open Media Vault" , it even has a zfs plugin.

OMV is pretty nice. It’s what I used in the past and it worked flawlessly for years.


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