Hard Drives disappearing as I add them to array and other I/O errors

[MooseCadets]

Hello! I am new to the server stuff. I got a Dell PowerEdge r720XD with x1 800GB SAS SSD and x4 3TB SAS HDD. My r720XD came with a H710 mini RAID controller which I found out doesn't support pass through natively to allow for Unraid to control the drives (to my understanding). So I followed this guide to cross-flash the controller and I didn't have any issues. After that I finally got Unraid set up (found out that r720XD didn't like my USB 3.0 drive) and it seemed everything was working. I set up my array with the 1 of the HDD as parity and the other 3 as disk drives, then the SSD as cache. I started the parity-sync but it was estimating 60+ days to finish and there were hundreds of errors piling up for the 3 disk drives. I stopped it, and tried to format since they said they weren't formatted correctly but the formatting would end without doing anything. Without finding any solutions, I wasn't sure if I needed to format drives through the bios before using, but found out due to cross flashing I couldn't get to the drive configurations. Reverted my card back using the cross-flashing docks, tried Unraid again but this time nothing showed up. I re-cross-flashed again and the drives re-appeared, but now when I assign a hard drive (no issue with ssd) the drive disappears from the assigned disk, the Disk remains "unassigned" and the drive is gone from the unassigned list so I am unable to see it through the UI. I tried some commands in the terminal and it said there was problems reading it and other I/O issues.

 

This is all kind of new to me so its hard for me to track down what is the actual issue. Is the hard drives not correct (I noticed now it says in the description it requires a H700 controller which I cross flashed)? Is the connection between the hard drives not right (didn't really think of "cabling" when I got the server, figured it was slide in and I was good)? Something wrong with my cross-flashing? Something I need to re-enable in BIOs? So many potentials, I definitely need help. Thanks.

tower-diagnostics-20220409-1708.zip

[JorgeB]

Drives are

Formatted with type 2 protection

You need to remove this, see below:

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/93432-parity-disk-read-errors/?do=findComment&comment=864078

 

[MooseCadets]

Thank you so much JorgeB! With that thread and the replied command:

sg_format --format --fmtpinfo=0 /dev/<drive>

I was able to format all 4 drives, to which now they were able to be formatted by the Unraid array operation. This puts me so much at ease. Thanks!!!