March 16, 201115 yr I added 4 new WD10EACS drives to an existing array of 8 +1 (parity) disks. Powered up. Took the array off line. Went to devices menu and found the 4 disks as "unassigned". So far so good. Clicked on a couple disks to look at the device types in the drop down: unassigned WD10EACS WD1500HLF Selected WD10EACS for one disk, and left 3 as unassigned, as I did not want to wait several hours to initialize 4 TB of new disk. One disk is now cleared, formatted, and part of the array. Now trying to add the other 3 disks and experiencing the following problem: The device types offered in the drop_down are only: unassigned WD1500HLF The WD1500HLF is the drive type of the system drive (velociraptor), not a WD 1 TB Green drive like all the data and parity drives. How do I get the system to recognize or add the WD10EACS device type (and display in the drop down)?
March 16, 201115 yr I added 4 new WD10EACS drives to an existing array of 8 +1 (parity) disks. Powered up. Took the array off line. Went to devices menu and found the 4 disks as "unassigned". So far so good. Clicked on a couple disks to look at the device types in the drop down: unassigned WD10EACS WD1500HLF Selected WD10EACS for one disk, and left 3 as unassigned, as I did not want to wait several hours to initialize 4 TB of new disk. One disk is now cleared, formatted, and part of the array. Now trying to add the other 3 disks and experiencing the following problem: The device types offered in the drop_down are only: unassigned WD1500HLF The WD1500HLF is the drive type of the system drive (velociraptor), not a WD 1 TB Green drive like all the data and parity drives. How do I get the system to recognize or add the WD10EACS device type (and display in the drop down)? What version of unRAID are you using? Does the drive you are intending to add show in the BIOS? Does the drive you are intending to add show in the system log? Post a system log. Otherwise we have no clues to assist in the analysis. unRAID has no "system drive" Describe your configuration. It sounds non-standard.
March 16, 201115 yr Author The o/s version is 4.5.4. The hardware is the cannonical Norco mothership spec of 2 years ago (SM mother, 20 disk chassis, 2 SM PCI_8sata cards). I have attached the syslog. I do see the devices there. The Device pull_downs had the WD10EACS entry the first time I added the disks and booted. When I initialized only 1 disk, and then went to add the others the pull_down no longer had the WD10EACS disk type. Only the "system disk", - which I guess is not used. Should I remove it? It's a WD velociraptor which might be better deployed elseware. The sytem has 8GB so I doubt it needs disk for swap. Frank syslog_03162001.doc
March 16, 201115 yr FYI, you should not see the device type, you should see a selection for each device. I see 12 disks total. Of those 12, there are 11 assigned to the array. You posted 8+parity+4 new which should be 13 total. You also posted you assigned 1 new disk which should have made 10 assigned and 3 unassigned. The numbers don't add up, at all... Also, that WD1500HLF is assigned to the array as one of the disks. It's not a system disk and it is not unused. You can't just remove it. You should be upgrading that disk location to one of your 1T disks and then it can be removed. Peter
March 17, 201115 yr Author Yes, you're right. The # of disks is inconsistent. There are 15 WD10EACS disks (green light power lights) in the Norco hot swap bay. I started with a "system disk" (inside the chasis not hot swap bay), and 10 +1 parity, and added 4 new WD10EACS. In the syslog after the 2 supermicro 8 port sata cards are initialized, there are 12 disk devices initialized one of which is the WD1500HFLS "system disk". I just moved some of the new disks around into new bays not currently in the array. On reboot I got 3 device types again. One was the WD10EACS type. Once I selected that for "disk11 device" the device option for WD10EACS disapperas for device 12-14. Before I assigned a type to disk 11, the drop_downs for 11 through 14 all had the option to select WD10EACS. But it seems to be some sort of next-available-disk scheme: the values (aside from unassigned) were: host18(sdk)WD1500HFLS host18(sdl)WD10EACS for each of the dropdowns is the same. I tried df and du from a telnet session and that only gives info on the /boot disk (USB key).
March 17, 201115 yr You're still not getting it. If you add 3 new drives of type WD10EACS then there should be 3 instances of the WD10EACS in the drop down box. When you assign one of the instances then the next slot will list 2 instances. When you assign one there then the next slot will only list one instance. unRAID does not let you assign the disk by "type". The single WD10EACS you see represents 1 single hard drive. Once you assign it to a slot there is no other hard drive detected to assign to the next slot. Look in the syslog and you should see 16 hard drives listed if everything was working (10 + 1 parity + 1 "system" + 4 new = 16 total). Right now, your syslog is only showing 12 drives. Besides each model number (the WD10EACS) there should be a serial number showing. You will have to use the listed serial numbers detected in unRAID and compare that to the serial numbers on the physical drives to figure out which drives are not being detected. Assign all the disks and then take a screen shot You still did not explain how you have that raptor showing in the assignment list when your syslog shows it was assigned (disk3 I believe it was). Once it's assigned to a slot it will not appear in the drop-down for another slot. Your syslog still only showed 12 drives. You are missing 4 (not detected) if you have 16 drives connected into the system. It would almost make me think you are missing the power or the SATA connections on one row of drive slots in your case. Peter
March 17, 201115 yr Author Got it. Thanks Peter. The disks added have power (Norco chassis shows green power lights on for them). I'll re-check the SATA cabling. I think there maybe a problem with the backplane. They are on a new horizontal row in the hot swap bay. I dimly recall it took a long stare at the backplane to figure out from the pc traces how the board was wired. Some of the builders of the early Norco server reported backplane failures. Watching the server boot, I see that at no point is there a disk seek (blue status light) to the unrecognized disks. Frank
March 17, 201115 yr Yes, the backplanes is a likely suspect. Sounds like you have some troubleshooting to do. If you used a breakout cable for that row there might be an issue with that cable too. Peter
March 17, 201115 yr Author The newer Norco backplanes and supermicro pci-x boards typically have SAS cabling I see. Nice and neat. The "first gen" buildout uses 20 individual SATA cables. Hard to see how 4 cables would be bad. The ones I am using came with the two supermicro 8-way SATA controller boards. Supermicro may have had a bad batch of cables. I was amazed that at the price point for the cards, they supplied cables with the cards. I guess my next topic will be where to find backplanes for an old Norco RPC-4020 chassis. When I build it up two years ago it came with minimal documentation (i.e. none!), and the distributers in US did not appear to have any spare parts available. I hope that situation has changed. Frank
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.