Adding HDDs not working?

[cewok]

Hey guys,
I've got an array of 4tb ironwolf drives I'd like to attach to my proxmox setup. Proxmox is up and running on some of my old desktop hardware, installed on an NVME drive. When looking for attached drives, whether through the web interface, lsblk, fdisk, the drives do not show up. I've checked BIOS as well, and the drives don't appear there either.

So, thinking that the drives were defective, I ordered another, and formatted it on my windows machine before transferring it over to the proxmox machine (mistakenly formatting NTFS). In doing so, I ran into the same problem as before, and then shockingly when I checked it again on windows, it would not show up at all, whether in bios or partition manager. This means that the proxmox machine is wiping/killing the drives?

Is there a step I'm missing when trying to get the drives recognized on Proxmox? Is there a way to reformat them if they're no longer showing up on linux/windows OS? I'd like to try to figure this out before I potentially brick more drives testing formatting and partitioning. Cables and power supply have all been tested.

 

[leesteken]

Does it not show in lspci? NVMe requires PCIe lanes. Maybe your motherboard disables a M.2 slot when a certain PCIe slot is in use? Usually it is the other way around, so it might be a BIOS setting as well.
EDIT: Just to make sure: is it an actual NVMe drive? SATA drives can also come in a M.2 form factor. And maybe the SATA controller for that M.2 slot is disabled for some reason.

 

[cewok]

Does it not show in lspci? NVMe requires PCIe lanes. Maybe your motherboard disables a M.2 slot when a certain PCIe slot is in use? Usually it is the other way around, so it might be a BIOS setting as well.
EDIT: Just to make sure: is it an actual NVMe drive? SATA drives can also come in a M.2 form factor. And maybe the SATA controller for that M.2 slot is disabled for some reason.

For clarification, the problem is adding HDDs via the motherboard SATA ports. Currently no issues with the m.2 NVME that Proxmox is installed on. In fact, this is the only drive that appears in BIOS or any linux disc commands I've tried. I'm intending on adding 6 ironwolf drives in a RAID 10 array, these are the ones not showing up after initial windows configuration.
For additional clarification, the drives do not show up whether or not I initialized them in windows before transferring them over to the Proxmox machine.

 

[leesteken]

For clarification, the problem is adding HDDs via the motherboard SATA ports. Currently no issues with the m.2 NVME that Proxmox is installed on. In fact, this is the only drive that appears in BIOS or any linux disc commands I've tried.

Sorry, I must have jumped to conclusion without reading your post carefully.

I'm intending on adding 6 ironwolf drives in a RAID 10 array, these are the ones not showing up after initial windows configuration.
For additional clarification, the drives do not show up whether or not I initialized them in windows before transferring them over to the Proxmox machine.

Who does the RAID? The BIOS or Linux or Windows? Sorry, if I missed this also. I'm not sure Proxmox (or the underlying Linux) support the BIOS RAID functonality. Can you try not using RAID in the BIOS and see if the drives are detected? You can use dm-raid or ZFS or Btrfs to do RAID on Linux.

 

[cewok]

Sorry, I must have jumped to conclusion without reading your post carefully.

Who does the RAID? The BIOS or Linux or Windows? Sorry, if I missed this also. I'm not sure Proxmox (or the underlying Linux) support the BIOS RAID functonality. Can you try not using RAID in the BIOS and see if the drives are detected? You can use dm-raid or ZFS or Btrfs to do RAID on Linux.

No worries, I missed a lot of details just to get the post down so feel free to ask as many questions as you need to understand the situation

This is my first time implementing a RAID setup. Initially wanted to do 6, but appears the motherboard doesn't support it, so 10 it is. I've disabled RAID in BIOS and the drives are not detected (only plugging in one at a time at the moment regardless). Planning on doing ZFS once we get to that stage, but for now just getting a drive detected again is the main priority.

I thought it could be is disabled SATA ports as I can't find a way to disable/enable them in BIOS, but since the drives no longer appear on my windows machine after attaching them to the same point I have another HDD on, that doesn't seem to be the issue either.

 

[Dunuin]

Its strange that Windows can't see them anymore. And you said you tested the PSU. I hope there is not a short in the SATA controller/cable or PSU killing your HDDs electronics.
How did you test that Windows can't see the HDDs anymore? Did you checked them in the "Disk Management" window?

 

[cewok]

Its strange that Windows can't see them anymore. And you said you tested the PSU. I hope there is not a short in the SATA controller/cable or PSU killing your HDDs electronics.
How did you test that Windows can't see the HDDs anymore? Did you checked them in the "Disk Management" window?

Exactly what I'm afraid of as well. Lots of money down the drain if so, and not many ways for me to test that I know of.

I just replaced one of my usual drives so that I have known good cable connections, followed by booting into BIOS (with no drive showing) and then proceeding to Windows Disk Management Window with no additional drive appearing.

 

[Dunuin]

Hm, so on both computers your SATA isn't working anymore, no matter what disk you test?

Only thing then comes to my mind is a bad disk killing the SATA controllers.

But that would be really strange.

 

[cewok]

Hm, so on both computers your SATA isn't working anymore, no matter what disk you test?

Only thing then comes to my mind is a bad disk killing the SATA controllers.

But that would be really strange.

Not exactly. When the ironwolf drive (Z:test) that was initially visible in my daily windows driver (MX) and that I partitioned in MX, is transferred to Proxmox (PX), it disappears. It does not reappear when reattached to MX. When I replace the my usual drive (E:Games) to MX in the same slot that Z was in, it works no problem. E at no point gets attached to PX.

So it could be dead/shorting SATA ports (cables verified good) on PX motherboard, I'm trying to see if there are any other possibilities. Dead/shorting ports also highly unlikely, as this is my old hardware that had no issues till now.

 

[Dunuin]

And in your PX BIOS the SATA controller is really set to "AHCI" mode and not "RAID" mode? In RAID mode it wouldn't be unusual if non of the disks could be found if you don't boot into the raid bootloader and create a raid array fist. Maybe there are also jumpers on the mainboard if oyu can't find options in the BIOS?

 

[cewok]

Correct, PX BIOS is set to AHCI. Initially I set it to RAID so for the initial bringup this may have been the case, but I swapped back to AHCI before posting for help, and was in AHCI when I was testing drive Z.

I don't think there are jumpers, this is an old gaming motherboard, but I can check when I get home.

Going back to your point, if in RAID mode and the drives not being visible, they should in theory reappear once set back to AHCI, correct? If so, then I think we can rule that out as a possibility as well.

 

[Dunuin]

Going back to your point, if in RAID mode and the drives not being visible, they should in theory reappear once set back to AHCI, correct? If so, then I think we can rule that out as a possibility as well.

Yes. But maybe your BIOS is bugged and won't really switch the controller back to AHCI after switching to RAID mode? You could check if there is a new version of the BIOS available. MAybe there is also BIOS changelog mentioning something like that on the manufacturers website.

 

[cewok]

I

Yes. But maybe your BIOS is bugged and won't really switch the controller back to AHCI after switching to RAID mode? You could check if there is a new version of the BIOS available. MAybe there is also BIOS changelog mentioning something like that on the manufacturers website.

I'll take a look. I know there is a new BIOS update available for the board, checked the changelog last week and didn't seem to be anything relevant, but at this point I suppose updating it wouldn't hurt

 

[Dunuin]

Atleast a BIOS update will reset the BIOS to its defaults, which usually doesn't include raid, so maybe the disks are found then?

 

[cewok]

Atleast a BIOS update will reset the BIOS to its defaults, which usually doesn't include raid, so maybe the disks are found then?

Let's assume this is the case. Would this affect the disks not showing up on MX after being plugged into PX? If not, then I think the problem lies elsewhere.

 

[bobmc]

Do you have a USB/Sata docking station? would give you another option to test the drives. Have to say I've never heard of anything 'killing' drives like this and I've worked in IT for a very long time.

 

[Dunuin]

Let's assume this is the case. Would this affect the disks not showing up on MX after being plugged into PX? If not, then I think the problem lies elsewhere.

No. No BIOS/OS configuration should be able to manipulate a disk to a state that it wouldn't be recognized anymore by another machine that is verified to work fine. Only exception I can think of would be a malware or firmware update tool flashing something else on the disks chips changing the firmware to an unoperatable state.

 

[cewok]

Do you have a USB/Sata docking station? would give you another option to test the drives. Have to say I've never heard of anything 'killing' drives like this and I've worked in IT for a very long time.

None of my superiors have any idea what's going on either, and I'm no hardware wiz so glad to know this is puzzling and not something I've overlooked. I'll order a docking station so that I can test via that ASAP.

 

[cewok]

No. No BIOS/OS configuration should be able to manipulate a disk to a state that it wouldn't be recognized anymore by another machine that is verified to work fine. Only exception would be a malware or firmware update tool flashing something else on the disks chips changing the firmware to an unoperatable state.

Thanks. I'll update the BIOS tonight and see if that gets us anywhere regardless.

 

[bobmc]

Only exception would be a malware or firmware update tool flashing something else on the disks chips changing the firmware to an unoperatable state.

True, I've heard reports that there are malware tools that do this rendering the drive and data completely inaccessible.