Hard Drives

Question

Hi,

I have a PowerEdge T320 that I bought second hand. It came with no drives, so I have purchased 5 x 500GB drives and installed them in the hot swap bays.

I am wanting to setup OpenMediaVault and have created the boot USB. I followed the instructions to make the USB boot first with no problems (in BIOS). Booted into the installer and started setup, but when I get to the part to choose install location, it only gives me the option to install on the USB. No other drives are showing up.

Could someone guide me what I am supposed to do to get these drives to be recognised on this system? They are all second hand drives, so should be wiped. Is there supposed to be a light on in the hot swap holder to indicate it working? Any other cables I need?

In your replies, if you want to know what versions of things I have, please tell me how to find that info...

Thanks

DELL-Shine K · Answer

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.

theJester1975 · Answer

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

DiegoLopez · Answer

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.

theJester1975 · Answer

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?

DELL-Shine K · Answer

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?

theJester1975 · Answer

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?

DELL-Young E · Answer

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

theJester1975 · Answer

so why can't I boot? . TOS76>

DELL-Joey C · Answer

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.

PowerEdge Hardware General

Hard Drives

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