Storage Setup for 4x 500GB Sata Hard Drives

[rautenbachj]

Hello.
I recently configured a FreeNas 8 (64-Bit) machine which I want to use as a Media Server storage.
I currently have 4x 500GB Sata hard drives connected to it.
2 of them are Seagate, 1 is Hitachi and 1 is Western Digital. They are all of the exact same size.
When trying to setup the storage inside FreeNas, it only sees 2 drives.
I have ensured that all volumes have been deleted from the drives to ensure no existing file system still exists on them.
If I boot the machine into a WinPE environment, I can see all 4 drives in the "Disk Management", although they have no volumes on them.

Is it possible to use different make hard drives like in my situation, or would all the drives need to be, eg: Seagate 500GB Drives ?

 

[cyberjock]

They should all work regardless of brand, size, etc. As you seem to know, mixing sizes isn't the best choice.

My guess is that you are hooking up 2 drives to 1 controller and 2 drives to a different controller. One of the controllers isn't compatible with FreeBSD/FreeNAS. If you are using motherboard ports the controllers are often differentiated by different colors. You should also go into your BIOS and make sure they are enabled, not in RAID mode(preferably AHCI), and then try again.

 

[rautenbachj]

Seems to be something with the HP DC5800 Microtower BIOS, I took a HP DX2300 MicroTower and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for the reply though.
Setting up my second one now.