Hi all,

 

I have just got an HP DL180 G6 server and I have installed unraid onto it. The aim is to use it as a NAS for my home network.

 

I have a WD Blue 2TB HDD that I have never used before that I have installed and it is picked up fine with no problems.

 

Now this is the problem I am having. I also have 2 500GB Blue HDD's that the server just wont pick up. They are powering up fine and I can see them when attached to a windows machine, but the server can't see them. Is there a special formatting that they need to have for Unraid to see them?

 

Thanks

Post up a Diagnostics file.    'Tools'   >>>   'Diagnostics' 

 

What do you mean when you say, you can see these two disks when "attached to a Windows machine"? 

 

How are these disks installed?  I did a quick look at this server and it appears that it has a RAID controller.  You have to understand that unRAID does not use any of the standard RAID modes and  any RAID Disk controller must be able to run in the JBOD mode. 

Hi. Thanks for the reply. Since then, I have now managed to get another disk to work. The RAID controller is working fine as far as I can tell, it is just the formatting of the HDD's that is the issue. Is there a specific format that the disks must be for the server to be able to recognize them? I have installed GPart on a spare machine to format the disks. 

 

Thanks again!

Sometimes a RAID controller requires that you "pass through" a disk in order for it to be seen by the OS. This might have to be configured as the server is booting by pressing a key sequence as that controller's BIOS is initialized. 

 

As far as partitioning and formatting, unRaid will do that. Should not impact ability of unRaid to see the disks.

Thanks. I think I have now worked out the problem. The raid controller that I have is an hp smart array p410 and as far as I am aware it does not support JBOD. Could this be why they are not working? How would I change the controller to JBOD.

Some controllers can be set to JBOD in the controller's BIOS.  (You will have to watch the boot-up screens to see how to gain access to it during the boot process.) 

 

Other controllers can be 'flashed' with new firmware to add this feature.  

 

With some controllers, you are simply out of luck. 

 

You can find a lot of info on various controllers in this sub-forum:

       https://forums.lime-technology.com/forum/33-storage-devices-and-controllers/

 

35 minutes ago, Ginger said:

Thanks. I think I have now worked out the problem. The raid controller that I have is an hp smart array p410 and as far as I am aware it does not support JBOD. Could this be why they are not working? How would I change the controller to JBOD.

 

No JBOD. See below. Looks like there is not a perfect solution, but potentially a workable one. The second item below implies that you could create single drive "RAID0" arrays on each disk. Similar to passthrough in a way, but the disks would not be portable to other controllers, which introduces a risk should the P410i fail. So I can't heartily recommend it for the long term, but seems like it could work. You could experience limitations in running SMART reports and with spindowns as well, but could likely get it to be recognized with unRAID.

 

If you look to a different controller, I would consider the LSI SAS9201-8i. It is a pure HBA controller that does not require crossflashing. It is available on eBay reasonably (there are also a -16i and -16e versions for larger arrays). There are a number of other cards like the LSI SAS9211, IBM M1015, Dell PERC H200, that fundamentally use the same or similar controller chips, but are RAID controllers that need to be cross-flashed to IT mode, These are very popular. [I was told that the 9201's are hard to find outside the US. But I recommend the it you can find one at about the same price as others].

 

If you buy a card that needs to be crossflashed, it is not very difficult. The biggest challenge can be overcoming UEFI booting issues so they have a platform to run the flashing tools. So please consider that before buying a card that requires being flashed. You can actually build a booting USB stick and see if you can get it to work before buying a card to reduce the risk of extreme frustration with a card you can't flash!

 

Good luck!

 

-------------------------

 

(from https://serverfault.com/questions/29349/disabling-raid-feature-on-hp-smart-array-p400)

"It is not possible to disable the RAID functionality of HP Smart Array controllers older than the P420i "

 

(from https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1552298-setting-smart-array-p410i-to-hba-mode-dl380-g6-with-it-mode-firmware)

 

"Why don't you just add each disk as a single RAID 0?

 

That would involve rebooting each time, and that means that it's a lot more difficult to take them out to another pc if I need to for some reason.

Plus, if something does go wrong, and messes up the raid configuration, all my data will be lost, but if it's just acting as an individual drive like normal, even if the controller or motherboard screws up somehow, chances are all my data will be easily accessible. "