Hello everyone!

 

I am very new to Unraid and I am having some issues. My current set up is displaying 2 Logical Drives. I have 8 HDDs set up in my server (An HP Proliant DL380G6. Old, I know, but I got it for free), and when I am looking within my WebGUI, I only see 2 Logical Drives, one at 1TB and one at 1.5TB. None of my physical drives are showing up. I have restarted the server multiple times but nothing is showing up. I have checked the LEDs on my HDDs and they are showing that all of them are recognized as plugged in and functioning. 

 

I attached my DIagnostics if that helps. I'm relatively new to servers and setting them up so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

guardian-diagnostics-20250224-2051.zip

RAID controllers are not recommended

4 minutes ago, trurl said:

RAID controllers are not recommended

I'm wondering if that's something I can turn off in the BIOS or is it hardware I can remove.

 

17 minutes ago, trurl said:

 

So does this mean that even if I disable the RAID Controller in the BIOS, even having the hardware installed can cause issues?

Those logical drives are likely multiple devices in a RAID, check the controller BIOS, but you should use a non RAID controller with Unraid

3 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Those logical drives are likely multiple devices in a RAID, check the controller BIOS, but you should use a non RAID controller with Unraid

Sadly, I don't have a fix for this. I tried disabling the RAID controller in the BIOS to no avail. I don't have the money for another server as I got this one for free. I didn't really have the money for this license and my logical drives keep going down. 

 

I think I'm just going to switch to Ubuntu. This was a waste of money. 

Like mentioned, RAID controllers are not recommended, but you could have used the free trial to test before purchasing

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Like mentioned, RAID controllers are not recommended, but you could have used the free trial to test before purchasing

Does Unraid give refunds for licenses?

Typically, not, since they are lifetime, but you can contact support and ask, why didn't you use the free trial?

17 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Typically, not, since they are lifetime, but you can contact support and ask, why didn't you use the free trial?

A buddy at work went on an on about how great it is, and couldn't recommend it enough. The Unraid site said it works with most servers so I didn't think too much about needing a Free Trial. 

 

I'll just probably end up eating the $50. I'm very new to servers, as in this is my first server and my first attempt setting one up, so I'll chalk it up to an expensive lesson. 

The RAID controller should have an option to destroy the existing logical volumes, and create new ones, one per device, as a raid0/JBOD volume, and you could then use them with Unraid, though not ideal and could be some limitations because of the RAID controller, like no temps, SMART, spin down for example.

3 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

The RAID controller should have an option to destroy the existing logical volumes, and create new ones, one per device, as a raid0/JBOD volume, and you could then use them with Unraid, though not ideal and could be some limitations because of the RAID controller, like no temps, SMART, spin down for example.

That can be done with SUM, but SUM requires a GUI to utilize if I did my reading correctly, and I don't see how to access the USB with the SUM through Unraid WebGUI

10 hours ago, Bro.Daniel said:

That can be done with SUM, but SUM requires a GUI to utilize if I did my reading correctly, and I don't see how to access the USB with the SUM through Unraid WebGUI

Are you sure? Normally the RAID card can be accessed at the BiOS level to achieve resetting the drives

7 hours ago, itimpi said:

Are you sure? Normally the RAID card can be accessed at the BiOS level to achieve resetting the drives

I tried to disable the card in the BIOS. It didn't help.

Disabling it won't help, you must enter and use the RAID controller BIOS.

5 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

Disabling it won't help, you must enter and use the RAID controller BIOS.

That's an option I don't even see on my server, which is why I am guessing I need the SUM. I tried that last night and when I used the USB, Unraid just wiped the USB

1 hour ago, Bro.Daniel said:

Unraid just wiped the USB

Not sure what you mean, Unraid doesn't wipe anything unless you tell it to, but don't know if you will be able to use SUM, never heard of that.

1 minute ago, JorgeB said:

Not sure what you mean, Unraid doesn't wipe anything unless you tell it to, but don't know if you will be able to use SUM, never heard of that.

And that's kinda the crux of what I'm running into. My issue and the resolutions I have looked up are so specific that no one seems to know the issue. I plugged my USB into the server and Unraid popped up a message that said it was going to wipe the USB to make it a disk which needed to happen so I can use it to run the SUM for my HP server that is 13 years old, and wiped the drive clean. 

 

At this point, this OS is doing me no good, because the only thing I am being told is "Unraid hates Raid Controllers" and "Should've tried the trial."

 

I'm chalking this up as a $50 lesson and switching to Ubuntu tonight. 

1 hour ago, Bro.Daniel said:

I plugged my USB into the server and Unraid popped up a message that said it was going to wipe the USB to make it a disk which needed to happen so I can use it to run the SUM for my HP server that is 13 years old, and wiped the drive clean. 

Unraid would not have said that in a popup or otherwise. And extremely unlikely you would be able to run SUM in Unraid anyway.

 

Probably if there is anything to be done with USB and SUM (whatever that is), it is to create a boot drive with SUM and boot that instead of Unraid.

 

Where did you get this notion of SUM anyway. Do you have a link that might tell us more?

 

Just now, trurl said:

Unraid would not have said that in a popup or otherwise. And extremely unlikely you would be able to run SUM in Unraid anyway.

 

It was said in red on the right side of the USB when I sat it as a drive. You said it wouldn't. I say it did. Wishing no offense to you, I trust my own eyes. 

If you tried to assign a USB drive as an array disk then it is true that Unraid will need to wipe it.

 

That isn't going to get you any closer to a solution.

 

I edited my post above while you were replying, so I will quote the new part here:

3 minutes ago, trurl said:

Probably if there is anything to be done with USB and SUM (whatever that is), it is to create a boot drive with SUM and boot that instead of Unraid.

 

Where did you get this notion of SUM anyway. Do you have a link that might tell us more?

 

 

If SUM is the Smart Update Manager, that can only be used for firmware, but not to create or destroy RAID arrays, and being old unsupported hardware, I doubt SUM will even do that. The quickspecs for the card mention for that you can use ACU, Array Configuration Utility or the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA) which you can reach by pressing F8 during boot. (The product page has lots more documents.)

 

The product page also leads to the latest firmware and installations for that, but I'm having difficulty finding ACU in the list of stuff, so ORCA may be your best bet.

On 2/27/2025 at 1:40 AM, Wody said:

If SUM is the Smart Update Manager, that can only be used for firmware, but not to create or destroy RAID arrays, and being old unsupported hardware, I doubt SUM will even do that. The quickspecs for the card mention for that you can use ACU, Array Configuration Utility or the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA) which you can reach by pressing F8 during boot. (The product page has lots more documents.)

 

The product page also leads to the latest firmware and installations for that, but I'm having difficulty finding ACU in the list of stuff, so ORCA may be your best bet.

Thanks for that information. I'm currently looking into my BIOS right now and I did a Disable of the P480i, but I saw a post on here previously about someone using that to switch the drives all to Raid0 for them to be picked up on by Unraid. I'm currently looking into how to do that, but so far all I am finding in the various troubleshooting is "Do this thing."

 

EDIT: Also, F8 took me into Integrated Lights-Out 2 on my server. Exiting that, however, too me into ORCA, go figure. While in here, of my 8 possible drives, it's showing two of them only are selectable as Physical Drives, which makes me think suddenly I have a much larger problem on my hands.

 

EDIT 2: Scratch that. I figure out the drives are being used as Logical Drives. I had to delete the Logical Drives before I could utilize the physical.

Edited March 1, 20251 yr by Bro.Daniel

On 3/1/2025 at 8:12 PM, Bro.Daniel said:

Disable of the P480i, but I saw a post on here previously about someone using that to switch the drives all to Raid0 for them to be picked up on by Unraid. I'm currently looking into how to do that

RAID means Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. For a normal HBA or drive controller, it just passes through drives, but with a RAID controller, they control arrays instead. That usually means they won't pass through random drives, because they are not part of an array, so you have to make them part of an array. If you'd have an Adaptec RAID card, those do pass through drives not part of an Array, but LSI/Broadcom does not (although that may change in the future). Since you have an HP card, I don't know how that handles things.

 

So, you'd have to make arrays of single drives, and set them to RAID 0 which means no data security to pass through the drives as clean as possible (RAID has different ways to keep data safe). So you'd have to make an array, add a drive to it, set the array to RAID 0, store and close the array, make another one, add the next drive and so on.

 

The problem with RAID is that it has to remember information about the array, and it writes that to drives part of the array, which could interfere with parity checks if this data gets changed, but you'll find that out soon enough.