Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 04 Jun 2012 01:34:34 -0600
From:      Gary Aitken <freebsd@dreamchaser.org>
To:        Kaya Saman <kayasaman@gmail.com>
Cc:        Thomas Mueller <mueller23@insightbb.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Strange case of vanishing disk
Message-ID:  <4FCC650A.6000201@dreamchaser.org>
In-Reply-To: <4FCC2483.5080901@gmail.com>
References:  <99.2A.28751.ABF1CCF4@smtp01.insight.synacor.com> <4FCC2483.5080901@gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 06/03/12 20:59, Kaya Saman wrote:
> this is a very strange issue but I guess will either be related to 2
> things, PSU not being powerful enough or disk controller simply being crap.
> 
>> Here's what's going on. I have a little Chenbro 4 disk mini-ITX NAS
>> server with 2x 2TB disks and 2x4TB disks as storage - all spread out
>> over 2 ZFS storage pools. Additionally I am running the root file system
>> on a 40GB SSD.
> 
> [...]
>> _______
>>
>> One thing I can think of is to disconnect the questionable disk from the RAID controller card and connect it directly to the motherboard.
>>
>> Then you'd know whether the fault is with the hard drive or the RAID controller.
>>
>> PSU = power supply unit? 180 watts seems very little, I didn't know any modern system could run on so little. I thought the minimum would be around 400 watts, and this would not allow for a powerful gaming graphics card.
>>
>> Maybe you need to replace the power supply with something having more watts, but make sure it will physically fit.
>>
>> Tom
> 
> Thanks for the response!
> 
> Here's some more info that I managed to dig up:
> 
> Jun 4 02:39:19 Zeta-Ray root: ZFS: vdev I/O failure, zpool=ZFS_POOL_2 path=/dev/ad4 offset=270336 size=8192 error=6
> Jun 4 02:39:19 Zeta-Ray kernel: ata2: port is not ready (timeout 15000ms) tfd = 000000ff
> Jun 4 02:39:19 Zeta-Ray kernel: ata2: hardware reset timeout
> Jun 4 02:39:19 Zeta-Ray kernel: unknown: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (1 retry left) LBA=269091394
> 
> 
> Yeah, 180 Watts is what comes with the chassis as it's an external power supply. Additionally the system is a Mini-ITX so that would account for less power usage however, in this case I think it might be the PSU that's simply not providing enough power.....
> 
> 
> I will definitely try sticking the "downed" disk into the motherboard controller directly as that will tell me if the disk is the issue or not.

If the problem is actually insufficient power, this won't tell you a thing.
You'll have to isolate the power supply as not being a problem before anything else will be relevant.  

If you swap the two new disks, and the one now on the card fails, it's probably not a disk problem.  But you still can't tell if its the card or insufficient power.

If you can sideline the two original disks and run, it's probably power.  But I'd guess you're oversubscribed in that department.  It should be relatively easy to estimate as mfg specs for cpu + mobo + disks is readily available.

Gary




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4FCC650A.6000201>