Apologies if this isn’t the right forum, but y’all seem to know a lot about this stuff. I bought an older Dell Poweredge T110 with a H310 HBA that I flashed with IT mode firmware using a guide from fohdeesha on the old truenas forums. I got some used 2tb HPE SAS drives off ebay and of the 8 drives I’ve tried only 2 have even been detected in the BIOS. I’ve swapped the drives to different cables but only the same two get detected every time.
Oddly I noticed that the 2 that worked were manufactured in 2015 and the 6 that didn’t were manufactured in 2017, which made me think that maybe something changed between then to make them not detect correctly, but a BIOS update didn’t change anything and the HBA has the latest firmware too. The ebay seller said they tested them, so this failure rate seems exceptionally high, and with the failing drives being from the same time period makes me think it could be a problem on my end. If it means anything the model number for the bad drives is: MB2000JVYZN
TL;DR could there be something wrong with my setup to not detect these drives? or are they defective and I need to get them replaced (again)
What comes to my mind right away is this:
If you have the option to set up a quick Debian installation (I would actually go straight for downloading TrueNAS…), you could install the HBA there to check whether the HBA and the drives are working and being detected. Almost any old PC or laptop from the last 10 years (and even older) should be sufficient for that.
EDIT:
Although TrueNAS SCALE is based on Debian, if you go for a Linux-Distro, instead for TrueNas, Ubuntu might be a good choice too, since ZFS is available there out of the box.
I’d say the newer drives may have the “Enter/exit Power Disable (PWDIS) mode” implemented. See this link for Pin 3;
Standard work around is to put electrical tape over the drive’s 3.3v pins.
To be clear, I don’t know this is the case. Nor if the Dell Poweredge T110 supplies 3.3v on the first 3 power pins. But, it should take less than 5 minutes to test on 1 newer disk.
Were the SAS disks previously used in a SAN system? I acquired a stack of ex-NetApp SAS disks that I had trouble seeing/accessing on some hardware (specifically Dell Poweredge, iirc) until I’d low-level reformatted them (with sg_format) on a system that could see them successfully.
Disks in SAN environments often use 520 byte sectors (as opposed to 512 byte sectors in most other equipment), and some SAS HBAs, even in IT mode, will just refuse to recognise them, or else flag them as failed or inaccessible.
There’s a long thread on reformatting SAN drives over at servethehome forums. It’s a couple of years since I did it, so I may be misremembering, so go have a look and see if it’s any help:
mmhh…
life goes on as usual… in the evening I’m even more confused than the day before
From the WD-PDF: Q: If I am using SAS HDDs, should I be concerned? A: No. This feature is available for use on newer SAS chassis. Older SAS chassis will ignore this feature. Specifically, SAS HDDs never defined an alternate usage to P3 (Pin 3), and therefore legacy systems will have it as a “no-connect”. With SATA, the story is different. Some legacy SATA power supplies tied P1 (Pin 1), P2 (Pin 2) and P3 (Pin 3) together to 3.3V, resulting in P3 (Pin 3) being permanently powered “high”, thus sending a permanent “hard reset” signal to the HDD.
From this, I understand that in this case, it’s actually the power supply that decides whether Pin 3 receives power.
As far as I can see from pictures online, the Dell PowerEdge T110 doesn’t have a SAS backplane; the SAS connector power comes directly from the PSU.
So it’s actually quite possible that the “Pin 3 PWDIS issue” could exist here !
@ConsoleCowboy : you mentioned the drives are “not detected,” and now I’m not sure if that means the drives “don’t spin up at all”.
Perhaps you could clarify further, so we don’t end up digging in the wrong direction…
Wow, lots of activity here, I’ll do my best to get to everyone’s suggestions and let you know what finally fixes it.
The drives don’t spin up at all, after running for a while the working drives are physically warm and the non-working drives are cold to the touch. The drives don’t show up using “lsblk” in TrueNAS, and aren’t listed in the BIOS.
I’ll test this when I’m home from work, since it should be quick and easy.
Only other computer I have is a newer Ryzen 5000 system, and since the drives are SAS I’ll still need to use the same HBA, but I’ll try it and see if they get detected.
Thanks all!! I’ll try your suggestions tonight and report back with my findings.
Thanks for the help everyone! It turned out to be the 3.3v sata pins that Arwen mentioned, I found it easier to disconnect the 3.3v wire on a sata power extension I had laying around than to do the electrical tape thing.
Either way, my drives are detected now and I’m on my way to getting TrueNAS fully setup! Thanks again!
