Proxmox Disk Overview doesn't load as soon as the external HDD (WD Ultrastar) is connected via USB (logs attached).

U

user323346123

New Member
Mar 24, 2025
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Hello everyone,

Whenever I connect my hard drive (WD HGST Ultrastar DC HC520 12TB Internal Hard Drive HUH721212ALN600 3.5 inch HDD) via USB to my Proxmox server (HP t640), the Disk Overview page does not load. As soon as I disconnect the USB cable, the overview page loads without any problems.

Under Windows, the hard drive is detected without any issues. I had already formatted it with NTFS as a test, then deleted the formatting and all partitions again. Most recently, I completely formatted the hard drive using the following commands:




1.
Code: 
wipefs -af /dev/sda
-> to delete everything
2. (See Appendix #1)
Code: 
fdisk /dev/sda

g
p
w

Proxmox disk overview doesn't load:

1744183458957.png


Linux recognizes the drive:
1744183482179.png


I bought the following hard drive + hard drive enclosure:

Hard drive enclosure

Hard drive: WD HGST Ultrastar DC HC520 12TB Internal Hard Drive HUH721212ALN600 3.5 inch HDD

Note: The hard drive uses a native byte size of 4096 bytes. But to my knowledge, this shouldn't cause problems anymore, as this was already introduced in 2010.

Question: Why is the hard drive detected via lsblk, but Proxmox doesn't load when the Disk Overview page is accessed? As soon as I access the Disk Overview page, the IO Delay also increases to slightly over 50%.

I would be very grateful for any help!



APPENDIX

PROXMOX Version: 8.3.4



#1
1744183553029.png


#2 dmesg log
1744183576478.png
 
Hi!

What, if there is any, is the output of pvesh get /nodes/pve/disks/list with and without the disk attached? Which version of pve-manager and pve-storage are you running on the Proxmox VE host?
 
Hi, Thank you so much for your quick message!

Please find the output of all commands below:

Disk not attached:

1744188575587.png


Disk attached:

1744188988081.png
Note: This command needs exactly 60 seconds until the output is shown.

PVE Version:
root@pve:~# pveversion -v
proxmox-ve: 8.3.0 (running kernel: 6.8.12-8-pve)
pve-manager: 8.3.4 (running version: 8.3.4/65224a0f9cd294a3)
proxmox-kernel-helper: 8.1.0
proxmox-kernel-6.8: 6.8.12-8
proxmox-kernel-6.8.12-8-pve-signed: 6.8.12-8
proxmox-kernel-6.8.12-2-pve-signed: 6.8.12-2
proxmox-kernel-6.8.4-2-pve-signed: 6.8.4-2
ceph-fuse: 17.2.7-pve3
corosync: 3.1.7-pve3
criu: 3.17.1-2+deb12u1
glusterfs-client: 10.3-5
ifupdown2: 3.2.0-1+pmx11
ksm-control-daemon: 1.5-1
libjs-extjs: 7.0.0-5
libknet1: 1.28-pve1
libproxmox-acme-perl: 1.5.1
libproxmox-backup-qemu0: 1.5.1
libproxmox-rs-perl: 0.3.4
libpve-access-control: 8.2.0
libpve-apiclient-perl: 3.3.2
libpve-cluster-api-perl: 8.0.10
libpve-cluster-perl: 8.0.10
libpve-common-perl: 8.2.9
libpve-guest-common-perl: 5.1.6
libpve-http-server-perl: 5.2.0
libpve-network-perl: 0.10.0
libpve-rs-perl: 0.9.1
libpve-storage-perl: 8.3.3
libspice-server1: 0.15.1-1
lvm2: 2.03.16-2
lxc-pve: 6.0.0-1
lxcfs: 6.0.0-pve2
novnc-pve: 1.5.0-1
proxmox-backup-client: 3.3.3-1
proxmox-backup-file-restore: 3.3.3-1
proxmox-firewall: 0.6.0
proxmox-kernel-helper: 8.1.0
proxmox-mail-forward: 0.3.1
proxmox-mini-journalreader: 1.4.0
proxmox-offline-mirror-helper: 0.6.7
proxmox-widget-toolkit: 4.3.4
pve-cluster: 8.0.10
pve-container: 5.2.4
pve-docs: 8.3.1
pve-edk2-firmware: 4.2023.08-4
pve-esxi-import-tools: 0.7.2
pve-firewall: 5.1.0
pve-firmware: 3.14-3
pve-ha-manager: 4.0.6
pve-i18n: 3.3.3
pve-qemu-kvm: 9.0.2-5
pve-xtermjs: 5.3.0-3
qemu-server: 8.3.8
smartmontools: 7.3-pve1
spiceterm: 3.3.0
swtpm: 0.8.0+pve1
vncterm: 1.8.0
zfsutils-linux: 2.2.7-pve1
root@pve:~#
 

Attachments

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Last edited:
user323346123 said:
Note: This command needs exactly 60 seconds until the output is shown.
Click to expand...
Sounds like another issue reported by a user, where their disk seemed to not support querying the SMART statistics data. Could you verify whether the following command also takes around 60 seconds for the disk?

Code: 
smartctl -a /dev/sda

Edit: And what is the output of cat /sys/block/sda/queue/rotational for you here?
 
Last edited:
Yes, in this case I also receive the following error, when trying to query the smart data:

1000046870.png



The queue returns 1:

1000046871.png


Since you've mentioned this has been mentioned by another user already, is there a workaround already available?

FYI: I also have an USB Stick connected to Proxmox which also doesn't support smart and there it's working perfectly (its visible in the first lsblk screenshot, under /dev/sdb)
 
Last edited:
Thanks for sending the output to the command! Did it also take 60 seconds or did the command finish instantaneously? What is the output for smartctl -a -T permissive /dev/sda and smart -H -T permissive /dev/sda?

It seems that some external USB hard drives have faulty firmware or insufficient information about the hard drive or the kernel added some quirks to them which disallow accessing some information registers. If the two commands above work for you, I can see if it'd be appropriate to add the tolerancy option -T to the command line.

If the smartctl command didn't take much time, how long does udevadm info -p /sys/block/sda --query all take? It could also be beneficial to see the output of that command and how the USB hard drive advertises itself or is recognized by the kernel.
 
Last edited:
Correct, the smartctl command also took around 60 seconds.

Here's the output of the other two commands. Both took again each 60s to show an output:

1000046885.png
 
Hm, does the disk work correctly otherwise? Are there no issues in using it? If possible, can you try if the cable is defective?

I've just discovered that 60 seconds is the default timeout for smartctl to wait for the SCSI commands to complete.
 
I checked the disk using Windows. There everything works perfectly. I formatted the drive to NTFS and could write and read files to / from the disk using Windows.

I also used the same USB / SATA enclosure with another hdd drive and there everything worked and I could read the smart values using proxmox
 
Last edited:
user323346123 said:
Update: Getting a new hdd enclosure solved the issue. In particular one with the chip: ASM1153E
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update! Is the mentioned chip the one that had problems with retrieving SMART statistics or the new one? Either way, I sent a patch [0], which sets a lower timeout for the smartctl command we issue that takes so long.

If possible, it would be great that the patch gets tested with the disk that is affected by this issue. Thanks!

[0] https://lore.proxmox.com/pve-devel/.../T/#m5ea2c186c479bff0cc108f7ad17938a8373736a7
 
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