Issues with WD 8TB Red HD

Philbert · 22. März 2019

Hey Guys,

Newbie to OpenMediVault - well I want to be!!! Currently using FreeNAS 11 as a Home File Server and would like to convert to Open Media Vault for the same purpose...Last night, I loaded Open Media Vault with the four (4) WD 8TB Red Hard drives and followed a YouTube Tutorial for the install...Wiped Drives and went to the RAID configrator - but the WD Red Drives do not appear... I have worried with this and worried with this and ready to give up on the install...This morning I googled the issue and looks like drives larger than 2TB and looks like Linux will not recognize drives larger than 2 TB without being converted to GPT...So onward with the Battle and finally after spending this morning into trying to resolve this, decided to go back with the FreeNAS OS unless someone can steer me clear of this issue...Any assistance will be Greatly Appreciated!!!

macom · 22. März 2019

Even if you wiped the drives, there might be some signatures left on them. What is the output of

wipefs -n /dev/sd? exchange ? according to your actual drives.

votdev · 22. März 2019

How are the drives connected? The RAID dialog hides devices that are connected via USB.

Philbert · 24. März 2019

Votdev,

Thanks for the response... I want to configure the Server as RAID1 but the problem is - no drives show up in the wizard to select...I abandoned the effort and reinstalled FreeNAS 11...Still would like to pursue OpenMediaVault if the drive issue is resolved.

Philbert · 24. März 2019

Oh, forgot to mention drive connectivity...All drives use SATA Connections to Asus Motherboard - Intel I7-950 ...Unable to give output of exchange...

Again, reverted to FreeNAS 11.2 after the 'failed' attempt

geaves · 24. März 2019

Zitat von Philbert

Again, reverted to FreeNAS 11.2 after the 'failed' attempt

Feenas uses ZFs, ZFS adds a signature at the beginning and the end of the drive, simply running a 'quick wipe' in OMV to prepare the drives will only remove the signature at the beginning of the dive and not the end. This alone will make the drives appear unavailable in OMV that is why @macom asked you to run wipefs -n /dev/sd? replacing ? with the drives letter, this will show the signatures on the drive.

Philbert · 24. März 2019

OK ...These drives have been installed in the FreeNAS Server Box... I have a 5 TB drive that I could experiment with and maybe, if I am brave enough, will try the WD *TG Reds again and format using the command line above... Thanks for the info and will reply later this week...

Philbert · 25. März 2019

OK Guys,

Ran the Command Line and results are as follows:

ZFS_Member (Filesystem)....

So, how do I need to proceed??? We're using 2012 Mac Pro Computers in our Home Network - can I Format these Drives to Mac Extended Journal and erase this info???

Thanks Again

tkaiser · 25. März 2019

Zitat von Philbert

can I Format these Drives to Mac Extended Journal and erase this info???

Most probably not or just by using dd there and calculating offsets (with ZFS there can be up to 4 vdev labels on a disk). The most easy way is to use ZFS itself so you could simply use OMV and add the ZFS plugin (+ proxmox kernel). Then there are two variants:

use zpool labelclear /dev/disk/by-id/$drive (replacing $drive with the correct identifier)
use OMV with your two disks as zmirror which is a way better choice than mdraid's lame RAID 1 mode

The latter is highly recommended!

@votdev I would consider zpool labelclear a good addition to the 'wipe' actions accessible by OMV's UI but most probably you don't want to rely on this external dependency, right?

votdev · 25. März 2019

Zitat von tkaiser

I would consider zpool labelclear a good addition to the 'wipe' actions accessible by OMV's UI but most probably you don't want to rely on this external dependency, right?

This is correct, but i've enhanced the quick wiping using dd. See https://github.com/openmediavault/openmediavault/pull/328.

tkaiser · 25. März 2019

Zitat von votdev

i've enhanced the quick wiping using dd. See github.com/openmediavault/openmediavault/pull/328

I hope 1MiB is enough (ran into some strange issues years ago with a RAID controller changing drive geometry -- I guess this is also the main reason why ZFS adds signature at the beginning and end of disk devices)

votdev · 25. März 2019

Zitat von tkaiser

I hope 1MiB is enough (ran into some strange issues years ago with a RAID controller changing drive geometry -- I guess this is also the main reason why ZFS adds signature at the beginning and end of disk devices)

OK, changed it to 4MiB.

Jetzt mitmachen!