Problems replacing a HD, 8th gen HP micro

TrueNAS General
1

orginial setup:

truenas 25.04.2.4
8th gen HP microserver
500 gb sata SSD boot drive
17 tb sata drive
17 tb sata drive
(2 disk mirror)
2nd drive had errors, pool was degraded, so I bought a 25 tb sata drive from Server Part Deals as a replacement

In TrueNAS I detached? the bad existing drive, shut the system down (not hot swap) and put the 25 TB drive in the system

started up and had various boot problems
- tries to use the built in RAID that I had disabled, then tries a network boot
- starts to load TrueNAS, but tons of journald errors and never fully boots

I started from scratch by doing a fresh install on the boot drive (by itself in the system) – then added the good 17 TB drive – so far so good

Added the 25 TB drive and the problems have started over again.
I took the 25 TB drive out and the problems remained.

Am I missing something?

2

I found another thread that said, to use AHCI, so I made sure that was set and things are much better – but I only see the boot drive and the new 25tb drive

3

now see all 3 drives
shutdown and re-seated them

4

It doesn’t show the missing drive that would let me “replace”
Is there an easy way add the 25tb as a mirror to the original 17tb?
extend?

5

I tried extend, but got this, which I think means a problem with the disk? The disk is firmly seated in the backplane of the server and I just got it from Server Part Deals.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/job.py”, line 515, in run
await self.future
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/job.py”, line 560, in run_body
rv = await self.method(*args)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/schema/processor.py”, line 174, in nf
return await func(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/schema/processor.py”, line 48, in nf
res = await f(*args, **kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/plugins/pool/attach_disk.py", line 78, in attach
await self.middleware.call(‘pool.format_disks’, job, disks, 5, 20)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/main.py”, line 1005, in call
return await self.call(
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/main.py”, line 720, in call
return await methodobj(*prepared_call.args)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/plugins/pool/format_disks.py", line 29, in format_disks
await asyncio_map(unlock_and_format_disk, disks.items(), limit=16)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/utils/asyncio.py", line 19, in asyncio_map
return await asyncio.gather(*futures)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/utils/asyncio.py", line 16, in func
return await real_func(arg)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/plugins/pool_/format_disks.py”, line 24, in unlock_and_format_disk
await self.middleware.call(‘disk.format’, disk, config.get(‘size’))
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/main.py”, line 1005, in call
return await self._call(
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/main.py”, line 731, in call
return await self.run_in_executor(prepared_call.executor, methodobj, *prepared_call.args)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/main.py”, line 624, in run_in_executor
return await loop.run_in_executor(pool, functools.partial(method, *args, **kwargs))
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File “/usr/lib/python3.11/concurrent/futures/thread.py”, line 58, in run
result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/plugins/disk/format.py", line 33, in format
self.middleware.call_sync(‘disk.wipe’, disk, ‘QUICK’, False).wait_sync(raise_error=True)
File “/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/middlewared/job.py”, line 487, in wait_sync
raise CallError(self.error)
middlewared.service_exception.CallError: [EFAULT] [Errno 5] Input/output error

6

running long smart test now

7

Just in case anyone is in this situation, make sure you have it set to AHCI sata, and also, don’t accidentally buy a Host-Managed SMR drive.

One other note – take a look a the UGreen NAS. I got one and it is much better than I expected. Ctrl F12 to get into the bios to turn the watchdog off – and suddenly you have complete control and can do whatever you want. The toolless drive caddies are nice too. I had it up and running in minutes (should have timed it)