I recently acquired a FreeNAS Mini 2.0 but I’m having trouble with booting from the SATA DOM. I’m a tinkerer with lots of IT experience and this seemed like a good way to get into the realm of enterprise grade hardware for my up-and-coming homelab. When I first booted the device, I got the error “This is a FreeNAS data disk and can not boot system. System halted.” I poked around in the BIOS and could not find the Apacer SATA DOM showing on any of the SATA ports. I restored the default UEFI settings but was still unable to boot to the SATA DOM. To rule out an issue with the SATA controller or physical port itself, I tried moving the module between the available ports and even tried putting it in one of the known good ports for the HDD backplane. I also tried powering the module with the separate Molex power that was previously unused instead of piggybacking the backplane power. After that failed, I tried a spare 2.5" SSD and was able to get it detected in all SATA ports so I figured the DOM was dead. I want to keep the two internal 2.5" drive bays open for high speed storage so I ordered a few InnoDisk SATA DOMs to replace the presumed dead one. Unfortunately, I’m unable to get any of the new modules detected in the BIOS either. I perused the forums for several hours and tried everything that seemed promising but no dice. I created a TrueNAS Scale install USB with the hopes that the installer would be able to detect the modules even though they’re not showing in the BIOS but got nothing there either.
The only thing I can think of is that there’s a BIOS setting I’m missing somewhere that’s preventing the drives from showing. For some context, I’ve included a few screenshots of the current configurations.
SATA DOMs need power, either from a compatible powered slot (what board do you have? I think the C3000 Minis should have one or two of those yellow ports), if the DOM supports it, or from a power cable. I don’t know how standardized these things really are.
Edit: Yours is an older C2750 Mini. I think those don’t support powering DOMs directly.
If there is a yellow SATA connector slightly offset from the rest on the board then you’ll have a better chance of getting it working since that is a the designated port for SATA DOM. There should be a dedicated power plug just next to it: See below labelled JSD1 with the port I-SATA0 just to the right; use that:
In the BIOS settings, is there an option for SATA configuration, or power management to the SATA ports?
Was the 2.5" drive which successfully booted an HDD or SSD? Sometimes you have to tell the SATA config what type of drive is on a particular SATA port.
I appreciate the input! Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a designated SATA DOM port on the C2750D4I motherboard. When I first opened the chassis, the module was plugged in to port #11 on this diagram:
Have you tried any of the DOMs in another system? These things are not known for being very reliable, sadly, and you may have gotten shafted on the ones you bought.
I don’t have another server board to test with. I did try all 4 DOMs (1 original and 3 new-to-me) in my PC with an MSI 970 AMD board and got nothing there so I figured there was some special BIOS configuration needed to see them. I guess it’s possible they’re all DOA since they’re not new
I did that years ago and have two 120 GB 2.5” SATA drives mirrored together as boot drives. I did some kind of provisioning to them (can’t recall what) but they only show as being 96 GB drives, the rest used for redundancy I believe.
This might be a very long shot, but I once had a molex adapter cable give me intermittent problems - even though it tested OK with a volt meter. I replaced the molex adapter and the problems went away.
System:
TrueNAS 25.04.2.6 | Supermicro X9SCM-F | Xeon E3-1240V2
32GB ECC RAM | PNY 120GB SSD for boot
3 WD Red 4TB + 1 HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB in RaidZ2
Toshiba 128GB M.2 SSD
The C2750D4I motherboard had no designated SATADOM connectors (usually yellow, sometimes Red) or even little bitty JST-3 (?) receptacles to provide external power like some Supermicro motherboards.
IIRC, the way ixsystems solved it was by adding an inline IDE to SATADOM power plug adapter to one of the power supply harnesses. It looks like this and will feature a tiny plug on the skinny wire ends for the SATADOM.
Without that connector, the SATADOM doesn’t get the 5vdc it needs to boot. Below is a picture I stole from small form factor showing a SATADOM plugged into a regular (white) SATA port and getting power from the special SATDOM power harness plugged into the motherboard. The yellow connectors would have obviated the need for the harness.
I have used two supermicro 64GB SATADOMs in a mirror for ages on my supermicro board. It has two built in SATADOM receptacles, so no need for harnesses.
