Hi,

I am totally new to unRAID but have been doing a lot of research in the lead up to starting and have hit an issue right away that I can't seem to figure out.

I have unRAID running on a Beelink EQ14 with HDD attached via a Terramaster D4-320 DAS. I know a DAS isn't the ideal setup but I read from a lot of users that they use a DAS set up with no issues (particularly for Plex, which is my use case) and I could get a more powerful system for the money which is why I went this route.

I am trying to format and mount a brand new 8TB Seagate Ironwolf but cannot seem to get it formatted or mounted correctly. These are my steps so far:

1. I assign the drive to Disk 1 and start the array. Disk 1 Status is "Unmountable: wrong or no file system"
2. Scroll down and click on "Yes, I want to do this" under "Format" then click the "Format Button"
3. Disk 1 status chnges to "Formatting" for a few secconds then returns to "Unmountable: wrong or no file system"

I tried this a few times with no change. When I stop the array there is a red X next to Disk 1 and it says "no device" with the HDD name below and will not let me reassign the drive or restart the array. The only way I have found to reassign the drive id to set the array slots to "none" then back to 5 (I intend on 1 parity and 3 data drives when I am done) then reassign the drive but the same issues occur. I then:

4. Preclearing the drive with Unassigned Devices. This took several hours and seems to have completed successfully.
5. After preclearing I mounted the drive and it formatted to XFS succesfully.
6. Stopped the array and shut down the server to attach another 8TB with data that I want to move on to the array with Unassigned Devices before clearing to use as my parity drive. When the server botted back up Disk 1 in the array was back to "Unmountable: wrong or no file system"
7. I ran xfs_repair in Maintenance Mode and via Unassigned Devices. Both come back with "No file system detected"
8. Repeated steps 1-3 with the same result
9. Removed the xfs partition in Unassigned Devices and tried to format in UD. "Formatting" window was up for about 15mins then disappeared with no change to the disk.
10. Tried all of the above on a known good (1TB for faster completion) disk with basically the same results.

So, I come to the experts asking what I'm doing wrong. As I understood it, preclearing the HDD should confirm that the disk is good and I can't find any documentation that seems to go against what I am doing. I need to get the data off my 2nd drive before I can set it up as parity so I need to get the empty one mounted alone first.

Thanks in advance for any advice you can send my way.

syslog.txt

There are write errors on disk1, you appear to be using USB which is not recommended, but post the output from:

lsusb -vt

It could be an issue with UASP

Your steps 1-3 look correct.

I suggest you post your system's diagnostics zip file with them taken just after attempting these steps your next post in this thread.

It is always a good idea to do this to allow us to see the current state of your system and so we can see logs

Thank you for the replies above.
After reading the reply about USB issues I decided to replace the USB C-C cable that came with the DAS for a C-A cable and everything seems to be working now! Maybe the USB-C port ans the USB-A ports on the Beelink are on different controllers.

I appreciate the warning/concern around running with a USB DAS, depending on how I go in the future I'll aim to upgrade to a dedicated build.

Thank you again for the replies, fingers crossed its smooth sailing from here.