Hi all,
I have an older Datto NAS, I think it was originally a Siris 3 of some kind, with a 3.0ghz Pentium G3220 and 16GB RAM in a Datto 4 bay enclosure (seems to be relatively modern; SATA 3.2, USB 3.0, HDMI output). It came to me used a couple years ago already running TrueNAS Core with two WD 4TB enterprise hard drives installed in a mirror pool, two empty 3.5" bays, and an empty space for a 2.5" drive separately. I immediately added a 60GB SSD for boot in that 2.5" space and reconfigured TrueNAS to use it but otherwise left it alone.
Fast forward to now and I’ve maxed out the 4TB pool and am in need of a lot more storage space. I ordered a couple of 10TB HGST enterprise drives that I had intended to make into a new pool. I later found out these new drives (actually refurbished, just like my WD’s that have been working fine) are 4Kn drives that also support “Power Disable”, and sure enough when I first plugged them into the NAS, they just didn’t show up. I tried the kapton tape trick, hot-plugged them back into the running system and boom, there they were. TrueNAS immediately recognized them. I was able to add them to a new pool and move data back and forth. I ran a long SMART test and it came back fine. I replicated my old pool onto them and the scrub also came back fine.
But then I tried to reboot, and my system hung at the BIOS. I had to hook it up to a monitor to see it, but it just gets to the AMI BIOS logo screen and then stops. If I connect a keyboard and immediately hit “F2” to get into the BIOS, it’ll say “entering BIOS” but then it’ll hang there instead.
If I then physically pull out the drives and reboot, TrueNAS will again boot fine. But if I then re-plug the drives, one will be added to “Pool 1” (my original pool) and the other will be listed under disks but not connected to any pool. I can then go through the complete setup again and get things back the way they want them, but obviously any time there’s a reboot it’s going to be the same process again. I know, the whole purpose of a NAS is that it’s running 24/7, but I did experience 4 power outages last year so at some point, it’s going to reboot and I might be away when that happens. I need it to be able to come back up automatically, and also not lose data by TrueNAS not recognizing the pool the drives are supposed to be in.
I did eventually upgrade from TrueNAS Core to TrueNAS Scale, knowing it wasn’t going to fix the BIOS hang but thinking it might at least fix the mis-assigning of pools when hot-plugging, but it didn’t. But anyway, so I am now running the latest version of Scale. Same issues.
I’ve tried messing around with BIOS settings with the drives pulled out (I can access it at that point) but I haven’t found anything that has let me boot with them plugged in. Is there some general magic BIOS setting that I need to set for these newer, larger drives? It seems really weird that they work with the system if I hot-plug them but that it won’t boot with them installed.
I’d love to update the BIOS but I’ve looked around and I don’t know that I can. I feel like the board is probably a Datto customization of some retail board but I don’t know which one, or if they have a custom BIOS too. It says it’s American Megatrends version F4 on the boot screen, if that means anything. I’ve opened the case up and it’s tightly packed and looks like it’d be very hard to get back together if I disassemble it, so I can’t really see if there’s a manufacturer name or model on the board. I can only see what it says on the edge, which is “REV 1.0”, “USB 3.0”, “Designed in Taipei” and “Erp Ready”.
My options seem to be a) send the HGST drives back (even though I think they are actually ok) and live with a smaller upgrade using older drives, and just consider the system maxed out with that, or b) completely replace the NAS, building it around the drives I now have. I hate to give up this Datto NAS because it is a very small, very well built little 4 bay system that I got for almost nothing but still has a 3Ghz CPU and 16GB of RAM, plus a server motherboard of some kind. It feels really snappy running TrueNAS, and replacing it wasn’t really in my budget. So I’m hoping somebody might be able to help me just get these drives working in it.
Thanks!