What storage controller did you have on the server? If drives are connected to a PERC controller then you need to create a virtual disk first. Once virtual disk is created it will be visible for OS installation. If it is not visible even after creating virtual disk then it will be a driver issue.  

Hi,

thanks for the response.

in answer to your questions, I have no idea, and don’t know where to find that out. I’m pretty new to this, so if you could point me on the direction of how to find that out, I’d appreciate it.

peter

Hello @theJester1975,

First of all, you need to know that not all drives are compatible with a PowerEdge server. For example, if you have bought some customer drives they might never be recognised. Therefore you need Enterprise certified drives.

This being said, in case you have some certified compatible drives, you can create the Virtual Disk, there are several ways to do this. On the Lifecycle Controller, more specifically the System Setup (F2 on boot) you can do it: How to create a Virtual Disk on a Dell Raid Controller Series 10 and 11 https://dell.to/3Z0TbRt

If you have a PERC Controller, you can do it also on the PERC BIOS (Ctrl + R on boot): How to initialize and create a virtual disk with a Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller Series 7, 8 or 9 https://dell.to/3IdhUw7

Regards.

I have SATA drives. According to the manual I can use them. Plus the drive caddy has SATA written on the side.

am I able to use them?

Can you boot the server to BIOS by pressing F2 during boot and share the picture of Device Setting page. This will tell which all controller you have on the server. You can also open the server and check where is the backplane is connected using SAS/SATA cable. Can you also share the backplane details like how many drive slot it have?

Hey All,

Thanks for the replies. It's been a while, but I finally got into the shed to have another go.

Firstly, I realised the drives were not actually connected to the board. oops. I unscrewed the drives and pushed them further back on the plate, and now they connect, and are showing up when I try to install open media vault. Installed everything, did updates etc. When I go to reboot, it wont start. Just keeps telling me there's nothing to boot from.

So I guess this means that SATA drives do work on this server because they show up and I can install OS on them? But can't seem to boot from them. Thoughts on what I might have to do get it to boot?

Hello, detecting HDD means you can install OS and boot from it as well.   

so why can't I boot?

. TOS76>

Hi @theJester1975,

It sounds like the driver used for the RAID controller in the OS is not compatible, hence unable to communicate well with the drives. Are you getting no boot device found? If yes, and the RAID controller is able to detect the drives, then it should be driver issue.