Can't get Seagate Mach2 Drives to show up in Unraid

[Timke]

Hello everyone, 
I'm mildly new to Unraid. Generally speaking, I'm quite good with hardware but struggle with software. I recently got my hands on some Seagate Mach2 drives, the ones that have two read/write heads. I'm expanding my server with a JBOD and got a SAS controller along with the drives. The Mach2 drives I have are the older ones (2X14 version) that only come in SAS and (normally) should just show up as two 7TB LUNs. Normally...

In the Controller BIOS I can see them, however, I can't format them. That's not tooo big of an issue as I could just format them in Unraid - if they would show up there...

The Controller Backplane mode is set to "RAID: expose RAW". I tried HBA mode as well but without any luck. 

The Log clearly shows that Unraid acknowledges the existence of said drives however that's where it ends. I've tried some scripts that I saw in a different thread, however the menu that opens just closes every time I press any of the buttons.

How the HELL do I get these stupid (but amazing) HDDs to show up?? I'm kinda frustrated and out of hope as I've been battling this issue for the past two days. 

I attached the diagnostics.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

- Timke

thevault-diagnostics-20241016-2125.zip

[Wody]

In your diagnostics in the logs it shows the card is found (an adaptec 8885), although with firmware build 33072 from 2016 instead of the latest one, which is 33556 from 2021 (assuming I have the right card, so verify it looks the same) which you can get here.

 

Since the firmware is from 2016, it could be that it just doesn't recognize the drives at all, the 2021 version is from after dual actuator drives, so that wouldn't hurt to install.

However, if adaptec raid is anything like lsi raid, you can't pass through drives, and have to add the drives to a raid-array in the card bios, even if you don't actually use raid, before it will pass them through. So you might want to try that as well.

[Timke]

Hi Wody,

thanks for the suggestions. The controller definitely recognizes the drives. I can see them in the controller BIOS. I have other drives connected to this controller as well (including SAS drives) that show up in unraid without issues. The firmware aspect is a good point. I was hoping this wouldn't affect it as, at the end of the day, it's basically just two virtual SAS drives per HDD. 

To your point of adding them to an array - gave that a shot as well. However since the controller can't format them and spits out a "SAS command error", they won't show up as initialized drives in the raid array menu :/

 

[Wody]

4 minutes ago, Timke said:

"SAS command error"

This suggests that either the drive is reporting something, or the firmware is trying something that one or the other (no longer) understands or goes wrong, so updating the firmware would be the first step. The release notes under the documentation describe a bunch of things that could lead to the error that they fixed as well.

[Timke]

Okay sounds like a plan. I'm currently rebuilding parity cause I added a 16TB drive as a parity drive so I won't be able to shut down the server or get ahold of the controller for at least another day but I'll post an update and if it worked when I get back from video shoot on tuesday. 

[Wody]

On 10/17/2024 at 11:48 AM, Timke said:

Okay sounds like a plan.

I got myself the same controller (although with cache and battery). Came with older firmware (30862), but the menus are the same (and I updated to 33072. A USB with FreeDOS works for that). For Unraid, both Expose RAW and HBA-mode work, but HBA is recommended. If it won't let you, you'll have to unitialize the drives (in disk utilities), this clears them. I would also remove all arrays from the controller for good measure, if there are any.

 

Since the drives are detected but don't work in unraid, try the unassigned devices plugin. Also see if you can do a short SMART test on them, to test the communication with the device. If that works, see if you can pre-clear them using the unassigned devices plus plugin. If that works, then reading and writing works, so formatting should work too.

If nothing works, the latest firmware may help like I said before, but if it doesn't, it may be a controller issue, or a cable issue (if you connect the drive directly, some cables don't have pins for the second port on top of the interface which shouldn't make a difference, but it could be that the drive reports two 7TB drives, but the 2nd drive isn't available if the port can't be used).

 

[SimonF]

On 10/16/2024 at 8:55 PM, Timke said:

Hello everyone, 
I'm mildly new to Unraid. Generally speaking, I'm quite good with hardware but struggle with software. I recently got my hands on some Seagate Mach2 drives, the ones that have two read/write heads. I'm expanding my server with a JBOD and got a SAS controller along with the drives. The Mach2 drives I have are the older ones (2X14 version) that only come in SAS and (normally) should just show up as two 7TB LUNs. Normally...

In the Controller BIOS I can see them, however, I can't format them. That's not tooo big of an issue as I could just format them in Unraid - if they would show up there...

The Controller Backplane mode is set to "RAID: expose RAW". I tried HBA mode as well but without any luck. 

The Log clearly shows that Unraid acknowledges the existence of said drives however that's where it ends. I've tried some scripts that I saw in a different thread, however the menu that opens just closes every time I press any of the buttons.

How the HELL do I get these stupid (but amazing) HDDs to show up?? I'm kinda frustrated and out of hope as I've been battling this issue for the past two days. 

I attached the diagnostics.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

- Timke

thevault-diagnostics-20241016-2125.zip 161.72 kB · 3 downloads

Devices are not allocated as a scsi disk hence not see by Unraid, no /dev/sdX, but have not found a reason for that so far how do you have the drives defined on the HBA/Raid Card?

 

 

Oct 16 21:08:49 TheVault kernel: scsi 1:1:9:0: Direct-Access     SEAGATE  ST14000NM0001    K002 PQ: 1 ANSI: 7
Oct 16 21:08:49 TheVault kernel: scsi 1:1:9:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
Oct 16 21:08:49 TheVault kernel: ipmi_si: Invalid return from get global enables command, cannot enable the event buffer
Oct 16 21:08:49 TheVault kernel: scsi 1:1:9:1: Direct-Access     SEAGATE  ST14000NM0001    K002 PQ: 1 ANSI: 7
Oct 16 21:08:49 TheVault kernel: scsi 1:1:9:1: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0

[Timke]

On 10/31/2024 at 10:10 PM, Wody said:

 A USB with FreeDOS works for that

 

Hi Wody, thanks for the update! I finally have some time to look back into this issue. I'm still quite unexperienced when it comes to the deeper levels of software. Again, very much into hardware, but software (especially linux) is sth that I'm in the process of learning atm. 
So how do I update this controller with FreeDOS? Just flash a USB drive, boot from it ... and then?

[Timke]

On 11/1/2024 at 4:51 PM, SimonF said:

 how do you have the drives defined on the HBA/Raid Card?

 

Hi Simon, I can see the drives in the controller BIOS, however I can't format them. It spits out "SAS command error" after a couple minutes. So to answer your question: they aren't. But I can't change anything either. Gonna try to update the firmware, maybe that'll help 

[Timke]

On 10/31/2024 at 10:10 PM, Wody said:

I got myself the same controller (although with cache and battery). Came with older firmware (30862), but the menus are the same (and I updated to 33072. A USB with FreeDOS works for that). For Unraid, both Expose RAW and HBA-mode work, but HBA is recommended. If it won't let you, you'll have to unitialize the drives (in disk utilities), this clears them. I would also remove all arrays from the controller for good measure, if there are any.

 

Since the drives are detected but don't work in unraid, try the unassigned devices plugin. Also see if you can do a short SMART test on them, to test the communication with the device. If that works, see if you can pre-clear them using the unassigned devices plus plugin. If that works, then reading and writing works, so formatting should work too.

If nothing works, the latest firmware may help like I said before, but if it doesn't, it may be a controller issue, or a cable issue (if you connect the drive directly, some cables don't have pins for the second port on top of the interface which shouldn't make a difference, but it could be that the drive reports two 7TB drives, but the 2nd drive isn't available if the port can't be used).

 

maybe sth else to note is that my motherboard is quite old and only has PCIe2.0. The controller runs on PCIe3.0. However, the other drives on that controller work completely fine. No issues there.  

[Timke]

On 10/31/2024 at 10:10 PM, Wody said:

I got myself the same controller (although with cache and battery). Came with older firmware (30862), but the menus are the same (and I updated to 33072. A USB with FreeDOS works for that). For Unraid, both Expose RAW and HBA-mode work, but HBA is recommended. If it won't let you, you'll have to unitialize the drives (in disk utilities), this clears them. I would also remove all arrays from the controller for good measure, if there are any.

 

Since the drives are detected but don't work in unraid, try the unassigned devices plugin. Also see if you can do a short SMART test on them, to test the communication with the device. If that works, see if you can pre-clear them using the unassigned devices plus plugin. If that works, then reading and writing works, so formatting should work too.

If nothing works, the latest firmware may help like I said before, but if it doesn't, it may be a controller issue, or a cable issue (if you connect the drive directly, some cables don't have pins for the second port on top of the interface which shouldn't make a difference, but it could be that the drive reports two 7TB drives, but the 2nd drive isn't available if the port can't be used).

 

Okay so a quick update: I managed to update the firmware to 33556. Now we're onto a new issue. The drives don't even show up in the controller BIOS anymore which they did before. For context, I have five other drives connected to it as well. Three of which are SAS, the other two SATA and all of them work without any issues. Unplugging said drives does not yield any difference - the two Mach2 drives still don't show up. When I head into the third option of the menu (can't remember what it's called right now) I get the usual prompt "scanning topology" (or sth similar) and then "scanning for SAS drives ... " which is where it starts counting to 4 (so 5 drives) and then just shows all of the working drives. 

Question for you - what do your "controller settings" look like? What backplane mode are you running in?
I mean, it shouldn't make a difference for being able to just SEE the drives in the controller BIOS but now I'm a little stunned that the drives just *disappeared* so to speak lol

Edited November 2 by Timke

[Wody]

On 11/2/2024 at 8:42 PM, Timke said:

Okay so a quick update: I managed to update the firmware to 33556. Question for you - what do your "controller settings" look like? What backplane mode are you running in?

It probably doesn't matter but how I updated it was using Rufus, where I selected the USB and then FreeDOS, and told it to go, which cleared the drive and put FreeDOS on it, and then I put the content of the Adaptec firmware on it, booted from the USB, and used AFU according to the instructions in the manual.

 

PCIe 2.0/3.0 wouldn't make a difference. It could have an effect on the speed, if at least 8 drives or so are transferring at full speed of their interface, which normally never happens anyway. Otherwise PCIe is supposed to be backward compatible. So the card wouldn't show up at all if it didn't work in the slot.

 

For the controller settings, I have everything set to default. There are no arrays defined, no initialized drives, controller mode is currently expose RAW, backplane mode is IBPI (backplane mode should only affect how the lights on the backplane are blinked).

 

Talking about backplane however, I have a dumb backplane, if you have an expander backplane, that could also affect things since they have firmware too, which may not recognize the drives properly. If you only need one cable for all 8 drives, and a big chip on the backplane, you probably have an expander backplane, if you have to connect a cable per 4 slots, you have a regular one.

 

The third menu is Disk Utilities and usually the safest choice. However, since they are not found during that, it means either the drives are not compatible, or they have broken electronics, which is unlikely since they showed up before.

 

Found out it is a compatibility issue, googling Seagate dual actuator drive not detected and following links finds this FAQ which says they are not supported for hardware RAID, and only newer controllers support them. So the series 8 controllers don't support them, and it has a list of controllers which do support them.

 

The Raid-in-HBA mode is what we've been doing, by not adding them to the array and using RAID: expose raw, or HBA mode on the controller. So that wasn't the issue, but the controller is too old. But you might consider one of the listed HBA's instead so you can't get any raid issues.

[Timke]

5 hours ago, Wody said:

It probably doesn't matter but how I updated it was using Rufus, where I selected the USB and then FreeDOS, and told it to go, which cleared the drive and put FreeDOS on it, and then I put the content of the Adaptec firmware on it, booted from the USB, and used AFU according to the instructions in the manual.

 

PCIe 2.0/3.0 wouldn't make a difference. It could have an effect on the speed, if at least 8 drives or so are transferring at full speed of their interface, which normally never happens anyway. Otherwise PCIe is supposed to be backward compatible. So the card wouldn't show up at all if it didn't work in the slot.

 

For the controller settings, I have everything set to default. There are no arrays defined, no initialized drives, controller mode is currently expose RAW, backplane mode is IBPI (backplane mode should only affect how the lights on the backplane are blinked).

 

Talking about backplane however, I have a dumb backplane, if you have an expander backplane, that could also affect things since they have firmware too, which may not recognize the drives properly. If you only need one cable for all 8 drives, and a big chip on the backplane, you probably have an expander backplane, if you have to connect a cable per 4 slots, you have a regular one.

 

The third menu is Disk Utilities and usually the safest choice. However, since they are not found during that, it means either the drives are not compatible, or they have broken electronics, which is unlikely since they showed up before.

 

Found out it is a compatibility issue, googling Seagate dual actuator drive not detected and following links finds this FAQ which says they are not supported for hardware RAID, and only newer controllers support them. So the series 8 controllers don't support them, and it has a list of controllers which do support them.

 

The Raid-in-HBA mode is what we've been doing, by not adding them to the array and using RAID: expose raw, or HBA mode on the controller. So that wasn't the issue, but the controller is too old. But you might consider one of the listed HBA's instead so you can't get any raid issues.

Thanks for the very lengthy reply! Really appreciate all the info
I'm gonna try to keep it short 😂
- I updated it controller through the BIOS of my editing PC. Somehow MaxView Storage Manager didn't want to run in OS but it worked through the BIOS.

- Our settings are pretty much the same so I suspect it's the controller being too old. I was hoping to somehow get it to work regardless as LUNs are nothing specific to Seagate's Mach2 drives. As you mentioned, there's a FAQ by Seagate that lists tested HBAs and Raid controllers. I saw that one a little while ago but was hoping to get it working on my 8-series controller with the new firmware. Gonna try to get my hands on an Adaptec 1000-series HBA soon. 

- Regarding my backplane. It's just a "dumb" backplane however it still has a bunch of microcontrollers, pins and jumpers to play around with. I have two Mini-SAS cables breaking out into four SATA / SAS data connectors each that then plug into the backplane. The backplane also distributes power via two molex inputs. The Mini-SAS cables have an additional unlabled 8-pin plug on the SATA connector side that supposidley plugs into the backplane. What is this cable for and does it make a difference? It's unlabled so I'm not sure where to plug it in and the one spot that looked somewhat obvious didn't make a difference.
I'm gonna look into the backplane I have a bit more just to learn how they work. Until now there wasn't a need to dive into that topic but it doesn't hurt to learn about it for furute use. Maybe it IS the backplane that is messing with my setup 😂

[Wody]

2 hours ago, Timke said:

 I saw that one a little while ago but was hoping to get it working on my 8-series controller with the new firmware. Gonna try to get my hands on an Adaptec 1000-series HBA soon.

Since they mention firmware, it probably isn't a physical limitation, but just that they don't want to make the firmware for old unsupported devices. You might want to look into Broadcom devices too, they seem to be more widespread and cheaper. The Adaptec software is more userfriendly, but for an HBA that doesn't really matter.

My backplanes have SFF-8087 connectors or SFF-8643, so a lot less cables, but otherwise its pretty much the same. Except of course this extra 8-pin plug you have, which is probably a SGPIO sideband connector to communicate with the backplane, on how and when to blink the lights. The SGPIO and IBPI are two different patterns for it. My backplanes don't have that, since the signals travel through the connectors, but SATA connectors don't have those signals, so you need a sideband-connector. Of course with SATA you can blink leds too, like the activity LED, but not with as much variation as the backplane is capable of.