UGREEN DXP8800 Plus: cold start enters BIOS, but “Discard Changes and Reset” boots TrueNAS

TrueNAS General
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Hi everyone,

I’m setting up a UGREEN DXP8800 Plus for an archive project and have a repeatable startup problem. Has anyone experienced this or found a fix?

When I start the NAS from fully shut down, it goes straight into BIOS. If I then select Save & Exit → Discard Changes and Reset, it restarts and boots TrueNAS successfully, without changing any settings.

I’ve now repeated this sequence three times in a row with the same result. Restarting from within TrueNAS also works.

Setup

  • UGREEN DXP8800 Plus.

  • TrueNAS Community Edition 25.10.7, installed directly on the hardware.

  • Intel SSDSC2CT240A4 240GB SATA SSD in bay 8 for TrueNAS.

  • Seven Seagate ST20000NT001 20TB drives in a single RAIDZ2 archive pool.

  • Original UGREEN 128GB internal NVMe drive retained; its boot entry is disabled.

  • USB installer removed.

What we’ve already tried and checked

  • Replaced the original Intel SATA SSD with another SSD and installed TrueNAS again. Both showed the same cold-start behaviour.

  • The original SSD passed a SMART short self-test.

  • Before replacing it, we checked the UEFI boot entries and confirmed the Intel SSD’s entry was first and was the entry used for the successful startup.

  • UEFI boot mode is selected, with Hard Disk first in the main boot order.

  • SATA controller, SATA Boot and all eight SATA port settings are enabled; SATA mode is AHCI.

  • Watchdog was disabled during setup.

  • After a failed cold start, there is no named Intel/TrueNAS entry visible under Boot Override. The Boot page shows a UEFI NVMe BBS submenu, but no separate SATA/Hard Disk BBS submenu.

  • Once TrueNAS starts, the current SSD’s boot pool is ONLINE with zero read, write or checksum errors. The archive pool also reports online with no errors.

The current running root is boot-pool/ROOT/25.10.7, and the boot pool uses /dev/sdh3 on the Intel SATA SSD.

I’ve ordered an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD as the intended permanent boot drive, which will free bay 8. In the meantime, I’m planning to use the working restart procedure so I can begin copying the archive, keeping the source drives intact.

Does this pattern suggest a firmware/SATA initialisation issue, or something with the UEFI boot entry? Is there a specific diagnostic that would distinguish those possibilities?

I can provide BIOS screenshots and command output. I’d appreciate a targeted next step, as we’ve already repeated the installation, boot-order checks and cold-start tests several times.

Thanks,
Tim