Supermicro chassis and motherboard, doesn't recognize drives

[Rauhaus]

This isn't a FreeNAS issue, but since this chassis and motherboard seem to be used for FreeNAS installations I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction.

I recently purchased this chassis: SUPERMICRO CSE-825TQ-563LPB Black 2U Rackmount Server Case 560W
and this motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X10SRL-F Server Motherboard LGA 2011 R3
along with an appropriate Xeon CPU and 16G of RAM.

I also have 4 x 4TB HGST Deskstar NAS SATA3 hard drives that I want to use in it.

The entire system POSTs and I've even installed FreeNAS from/to USB thumb drives without problem.

However, the hard drives, installed in the hot-swap bays, aren't recognized even in the BIOS. The documentation with the chassis is pretty sparse, and there are a number of connectors on the backplane that I'm not familiar with.

All the documentation I've seen says that SAS and SATA drives are both supported in the chassis.

I currently have the two MOLEX power connectors from the power supply connected to the backplane, and I have a SATA cable from each of the first four (bottom row) drive bays going to the SATA ports on the motherboard. There were also a pair of cables with 8-pin connectors included with the chassis, and I've tried connecting these to the "sideband" ports on the backplane and to the first two "T-SGPIO" ports on the motherboard.

I suspect I'm just missing a backplane connection or maybe a BIOS configuration option, but I'm so far at a loss.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[Ericloewe]

You should just need the straight SATA cables with the TQ chassis. You might be missing additional power connectors.

 

[Rauhaus]

Here's an interesting update -

I installed an older Seagate 2TB SATA3 drive into the chassis, and it was recognized. The four new HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB 128MB cache drives are still not working.

Those HGST drives did work in a different system in which I tested them, but not the Supermicro chassis.

 

[joeschmuck]

That almost sounds like you are saying the backplane fails to work with hard drives larger than 2TB. Do you have a different drive larger than 2TB that you could prove or dis-prove this?

 

[Ericloewe]

But that shouldn't be possible, it's a TQ. It's effectively just a bunch of wires (controlled impedance and length matched, but still, no logic).

 

[Rauhaus]

And I've now updated the bios on the X10SRL-F motherboard to the latest from Supermicro, with no difference.

 

[Rauhaus]

That almost sounds like you are saying the backplane fails to work with hard drives larger than 2TB. Do you have a different drive larger than 2TB that you could prove or dis-prove this?

I just tried a 4TB Western Digital Blue hard drive in this chassis, and it also worked. The backplane was a red herring - the HGST drives don't work even when I connect them directly to a SATA port on the motherboard.

I'm wondering if HGST implemented the "Power Disable" feature on this newest run of their drives, but that's about the only thing I can think of.
https://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/HGST-Power-Disable-Pin-TB.pdf

I'll probably just return these drives and replace them with another brand.

 

[joeschmuck]

Thanks for the read, I'd never knew about this new standard. I can see that this could cause issues in many computer systems.

Would you mind posting the specific drive model and any firmware data as well, and manufacture date. Maybe keeping a record of this could help someone else out down the road.

 

[Ericloewe]

Thanks for the read, I'd never knew about this new standard. I can see that this could cause issues in many computer systems.

Would you mind posting the specific drive model and any firmware data as well, and manufacture date. Maybe keeping a record of this could help someone else out down the road.

Yeah, I only learned about it when I was researching U.2/SAS/SATA backplane interoperability a few months ago. What a silly solution in search of a problem.

 

[Johnnie Black]

I'm wondering if HGST implemented the "Power Disable" feature on this newest run of their drives, but that's about the only thing I can think of.

There's an easy way to test, using a Molex to SATA adapter keeps that from happening for power supplies that have the 3.3V provided on SATA power connectors.

 

[Rauhaus]

Thanks for the read, I'd never knew about this new standard. I can see that this could cause issues in many computer systems.

Would you mind posting the specific drive model and any firmware data as well, and manufacture date. Maybe keeping a record of this could help someone else out down the road.

Sorry - that would have been useful had I thought to do so, but I've already returned those drives and replaced them with Western Digital 4TB NAS drives, which consequently do work in my now functioning FreeNAS system.

I do have a link to the data sheet for the new HGST drives: http://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/resources/DS_NAS_ds.pdf