[sOLVED] See reply #1 and #3 if you're having this issue.

 

 

Hi all,

 

Hardware:

SuperMicro MBD-C2SEA-O, 2x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, Pentium E5400 @2.7, 4GB RAM, Norco 4220

 

I just upgrade from 4.7 -> 5.0.5 yesterday.  Tonight I popped in 3x 4TB Reds to preclear.  2 of the drives were connected to the cards and the other to an onboard SATA port.  In this configuration, the machine would not boot. Moving the 3rd drive to one of the cards and I booted up fine and am now preclearing.

 

EDIT: To clarify, when I say it doesn't boot - Power on, memory check, spin up the drives on the 2 MV8s, and then just a blank screen/blinking cursor instead of the unRAID/memtest prompt. If that helps anyone help me figure this out.

 

I've searched all over here (and the internet in general) and I'm finding conflicting reports on whether the onboard controller will address >2TB drives.

 

Is anyone here running >2TB on this boards SATA ports? Only 4 bays in my case are using the onboard, so it won't be a total loss if those have to stay @2TB..  but if it should work, I wanna make it work

 

I did not note my current BIOS version when I was poking around. The drive appeared in the BIOS, but as an incorrect size (180GB, I believe).  I see the latest version on Supermicro's website is from 2012.. I'm sure I am not running the latest.  I can't seem to find an article on what that update (or any in between) addresses, but I am hesitant to flash my BIOS if that won't solve the problem anyway.

 

Thanks in advance for any infos, advice, musings! And yes.. I know my hardware is old

 

 

 

-D

 

The C2SEA definitely supports >2T drives.

 

I had a similar issue with booting. It turned out to be related to how I was booting off of my flashdrive.

 

I had configured my USB disk as "forced floppy" in the BIOS, and had configured unRAID to boot off of it as a removable disk.

 

But when adding a combination of controllers (BR10i and M1015), it would not boot off the flash. Everything in the BIOS looked perfect. Removing one of the controllers restored booting.

 

To fix it I had to reconfigure my USB to be a hard disk instead of forced floppy in BIOS. I was then able to make it the bootable hard disk and it booted fine. Not sure why this was required, but doing the same thing might help you as well. My situation had nothing to do with drive size (all disks in this second array are 2T and smaller), but as I said had to do with adding the second controller or possibly related to having a lot of disks in the machine.

 

Note that having the flash as a removable (floppy) disk is preferable, because now, every time I add or switch disks I may have boot issues and have to fix it. Not a big deal but certainly annoying.

Thanks for the quick reply, bjp!

 

I'm still in the middle of the preclears, so I can't check anything in the BIOS..  I expect they'll be done in the morning.

 

My concern with your proposed solution is nothing changed from the bootable to non-bootable state other than adding a 4TB drive to the onboard SATA controller. I have 4 other drives hanging out on that controller already.. as well as several spread across both MV8s..  so I did not enter into new combination of controllers situation.

 

I'll give what you suggested a go after the preclears finish.. but I can't make sense why it would have cropped up suddenly in my situation..

 

thanks again.

 

 

-D

 

After the preclear, I moved an older <2TB drive to that SATA port and the machine would not boot.

 

Mucking around in the BIOS showed it was indeed a boot issue in the sense that it somehow had this idea of "Hey, you put in a new drive you must wanna boot off that empty thing" and just sat there. I apparently already (thanks bjp999 for the starting point) had my BIOS set to treat flash set as hard drive instead of a floppy.

 

Manually resetting the boot drive to the flash solved the problem.

 

So, yes, the C2SEA can handle 4TB drives on the onboard SATA..

 

Thanks!