Proxmox Install Failing on R740xd - PERC H730P

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banrobertkaroly

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Dec 5, 2025
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Hi everyone, I need some help with installing Proxmox.​

The server I want to install it on is a Dell PowerEdge R740xd with a PERC H730P RAID card. I want to install the operating system on two used SAS SSDs in ZFS RAID 1, in UEFI mode. I set the RAID card to HBA mode, but during installation I see several I/O errors, and after installation, when Proxmox would start, a “BIOS halted” error appears in iDRAC and the system freezes.

I thought maybe one of the SSDs was faulty, so I tried installing on two SAS HDDs, also with the ZFS filesystem, but the result was the same as with the SSDs.

I read that ZFS doesn’t like RAID cards even in HBA mode, so I created a hardware RAID with the two SAS SSDs in a mirror and tried installing with an ext4 filesystem, but the installation doesn’t progress past 3%.

I also read that with ZFS it’s worth using the command wipefs -a /dev/sda to delete existing ZFS data, but that also gave an error:

sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] tag#777 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s
Sense Key : Aborted Command [current]
Add. Sense: Ack/nak timeout
CDB: Read(10) 28 00 00 00 01 10 00 00 f0 00
I/O error, dev sda, sector 272 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 19 prio class 0

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
banrobertkaroly said:
I/O error, dev sda, sector 272 op 0x0:(READ) flags 0x80700 phys_seg 19 prio class 0
Click to expand...
the (much) greater likelihood is that this disk is failing. have you run a smart test? (smarctl --test=long /dev/sda)

Assuming the drives are NOT bad, next is to run a full lifecycle upgrade. has the problem gone away?

If not, your machine is likely defective- and its probably NOT your perc card but rather the backplane.
 
Ditch the PERC HBA-mode drama and swap it for a Dell HBA330 true IT/HBA-mode storage controller.

Your future self will thank you. Plus, HBA330s are very cheap to get. Update to latest firmware from dell.com/support
 
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