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Xpenology box SATA scan hangs on Synology disks


aol

Question

I put the 4 disks of a Synology DS410 into an Xpenology box running the latest loader via USB stick. This Xpenology box had previously been running the latest Synology DSM using different disks that I migrated to a DS1515+. I expected the Xpenology box to boot up and either report the 4 disks from the DS410 migratable, or not, and deal with it. But it did a third thing I did not anticipate. As the Xpenology machine goes through loading the BIOS and doing the SATA disk scan, it just pauses during the SATA disk detection scan. It does not reach the Xpenology loader on the USB stick.

 

I tried:

 - disconnecting all drives: boots to Xpenology boot loader

 - reconnecting each drive one at a time: SATA scan hangs

 - connecting an unrelated spare drive: boots to Xpenology boot loader

 

So I've ruled out stuff like misconnected cables. It's almost like the drives which used to be in the DS410 are confusing the SATA detection routine. For what it's worth this is a Gigabyte 5 series mobo, a GA-EX58-UD3R with a core i7-930 CPU. Again, this same hardware has for months been running Xpenology/DSM with different disks. 

 

Anyone have any thoughts on why WD 2TB Red drives that used to be in a working DS410 would fail to be detected cleanly by the BIOS of a GA-EX58-UD3R board? I guess my next step is to use USB drive mounting hardware to mount and reformat each drive from my laptop. I just hate to do that, wouldn't mind migrating the data.

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Alright I resolved the issue with a BIOS firmware update to the motherboard. A huge pain because I don't have Windows, so I had to use a USB pen drive to install Win10 to a spare drive, then use the @BIOS utility. Anyway.

 

Thanks so much @flyride, @Tensol and @sbv3000. Your suggestions and patience were very helpful. Cheers.

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Hi aol,

 

I`m not very knowledgeable on this subject but can try to help, since I did something similar to you. Is there any setup in the BIOS that is deactivated, like boot on the thumb drive instead of the disks? 

Are you increasing the number of disks on the XPEnology box? I.e. Were you using 2 disks and moved to a 4 disks setup?

When you put those disks back on the Synology, do they work fine? Is there any red flag?

 

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Some thoughts

1) Its unlikely you will get help from Synology, unless its an issue migrating between their hardware

2) Check the drives for jumpers (normally near the power/data connection), as these are older drives there might be options to set various modes, eg speed, emulation

3) Try a setup with a drive that is found by the bios on sata channel 1, plus the other drives on 2-n

4) Try another (add on?) controller

5) Try IDE mode in the bios (XPE/DSM won't work with this, but it might help drive detection elimination)

I hope you have a data backup as messing about as above could affect the array/data

 

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3 hours ago, aol said:

But again, with even a single drive connected, I can't get into the BIOS again to see (since some BIOSes alter boot order when new drives are introduced).

 

 

I have no reason not to believe you yet the behavior you describe is consistent with it trying to boot from a Syno disk, which obviously won't work.

sbv3000 has the next steps advice I would consider for myself, if I were in your shoes.  However, how long are you waiting for the SATA detection to complete before giving up?  Try waiting a LONG time to see if it finally times out.

 

Just curious, what version of DSM was running on the DS410?

 

As a last resort, you could take a spare drive, configure XPEnology, then once it is properly configured and booted, hot connect your DS410 drives.  I'll have to look them up, but there are a few Syno CLI "magic commands" that will allow you to import your DS410 volume instead of migrating.  Then you could repair your system partition to update DSM on the old drives.  sbv3000's advice about a backup is paramount if you were to attempt to go this direction.

 

3 hours ago, aol said:

I did put each drive in a USB drive caddy connected to a laptop, and each drive spins up and reports "unreadable" since they are ?linux?DSM proprietary? formatted. I put them back in the Xpen box and they seem (by touch) to be spinning up. 

 

The disks are partitioned as Linux partitions but you won't be able to mount them in Windows without additional software.  What does "unreadable" mean?  You can verify that the drive is working by looking at the partition table, which can be done using Windows Disk Manager.

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18 hours ago, flyride said:

Fix your boot order to prefer the USB stick over SATA drives.

 

Preferably you should just be disabling SATA boot options when running XPEnology.

 

Hi flyride, thanks for posting. The issue isn't boot order, it isn't trying to boot to the sata drives, it's doing it's AHCI SATA detection scan, pre-BIOS. For example, if I remove the drives, and hit DEL to enter BIOS, it does the SATA detection scan (of course finding no drives) and takes me into the BIOS to edit settings. If I connect a single DS410 drive, it hangs on SATA detection, and never takes me into the BIOS. (connect any other drive and DEL takes me into BIOS edit as normal) It shows the splash screen, goes to SATA detection, and hangs there. Unless I'm missing something, changing boot order won't help get past SATA detection. Note that in trying to solve the issue I disconnected all drives, went into BIOS, loaded optimized defaults, set the boot order to USB first (and all others disabled), and rebooted. But again, with even a single drive connected, I can't get into the BIOS again to see (since some BIOSes alter boot order when new drives are introduced).

 

For sure if I can get past this issue I'll set the boot order to be USB/disabled/disabled.

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18 hours ago, Tensol said:

Hi aol,

 

I`m not very knowledgeable on this subject but can try to help, since I did something similar to you. Is there any setup in the BIOS that is deactivated, like boot on the thumb drive instead of the disks? 

Are you increasing the number of disks on the XPEnology box? I.e. Were you using 2 disks and moved to a 4 disks setup?

When you put those disks back on the Synology, do they work fine? Is there any red flag?

 

 

Thanks for posting Tensol. I did hand-edit the BIOS (with no drives attached since it won't take me into BIOS settings edit with any DS410 drive connected) to set boot order to USB/disabled/disabled. With any DS410 drive attached it shows the splash screen (showing 'hit DEL to enter BIOS'), goes to SATA detection, hangs.

 

In it's previous incarnation the Xpen box had 4 WD Red 3TB drives, and a USB stick running Jun's latest loader, and DSM was up-to-date.

In it's current incarnation it has the 4 WD Red 2TB drives from the DS410, same USB stick, but of course DSM is old since the DS410 doesn't support DMS 6. 

 

I certainly considered if there would be something funky with the USB stick, but it had 4 drives and still has 4 drives, on the same SATA ports. And, it's not even getting to the boot part of the startup, right. It stops at the SATA detection scan way before even trying to pick something to boot from.

 

I've considered putting the drives back in the DS410. I have no reason to think they wouldn't work. The 410 was a rock for 5 years +. I did put each drive in a USB drive caddy connected to a laptop, and each drive spins up and reports "unreadable" since they are ?linux?DSM proprietary? formatted. I put them back in the Xpen box and they seem (by touch) to be spinning up. 

 

Firmware incompatibility? These drives are probably 5-6 years old. Could the BIOS on the mobo simply be unable to read the firmware on the drives? Could the drives be stuck in some sort of low power mode? Technically I could ask Synology this. All I'm doing is taking drives that were in a DS410, and moving them to a build-a-box PC. I may submit a ticket to them on it.

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10 minutes ago, sbv3000 said:

Some thoughts

1) Its unlikely you will get help from Synology, unless its an issue migrating between their hardware

2) Check the drives for jumpers (normally near the power/data connection), as these are older drives there might be options to set various modes, eg speed, emulation

3) Try a setup with a drive that is found by the bios on sata channel 1, plus the other drives on 2-n

4) Try another (add on?) controller

5) Try IDE mode in the bios (XPE/DSM won't work with this, but it might help drive detection elimination)

I hope you have a data backup as messing about as above could affect the array/data

 

 

Thanks sbv3k. I tried to post a question to Synology but their web form seems to have a javascript bug. I have no idea if my question got in or not, or if they'll respond, for the reason you mentioned.

 

I considered jumpers, I'll double check that. I like the idea of setting the "good" (other) drive on sata channel 1 and seeing what happens if the DS410 drives are connected on 2+. I'll try that.

 

It's possible the motherboard or controller is bad, for sure, hardware breaks eventually. I don't have another controller to try but that's a possibility. I do have another build-a-box I could try a drive in.

 

I'll try IDE mode just to see if that does anything different. Thanks for your suggestions.

 

Not really worried about data loss - all the data has been backed up to a 1515+. At this point it's more stubborn curiosity about why this is happening than anything else. You live by certain rules and this situation is breaking my rules. Ha. "known good drives do not hang SATA detection on known good hardware". So something is wrong in that "rule".

 

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15 hours ago, flyride said:

 

I have no reason not to believe you yet the behavior you describe is consistent with it trying to boot from a Syno disk, which obviously won't work.

sbv3000 has the next steps advice I would consider for myself, if I were in your shoes.  However, how long are you waiting for the SATA detection to complete before giving up?  Try waiting a LONG time to see if it finally times out.

 

Just curious, what version of DSM was running on the DS410?

 

As a last resort, you could take a spare drive, configure XPEnology, then once it is properly configured and booted, hot connect your DS410 drives.  I'll have to look them up, but there are a few Syno CLI "magic commands" that will allow you to import your DS410 volume instead of migrating.  Then you could repair your system partition to update DSM on the old drives.  sbv3000's advice about a backup is paramount if you were to attempt to go this direction.

 

 

The disks are partitioned as Linux partitions but you won't be able to mount them in Windows without additional software.  What does "unreadable" mean?  You can verify that the drive is working by looking at the partition table, which can be done using Windows Disk Manager.

 

I am waiting a long time, several minutes, for SATA detection. I did try the idea of connecting the DS410 drive (one of them) to ANOTHER system and it is detected no problem. The other system is a GA 10-series board, so, newer. At this time I'm assuming there is a firmware issue on the ex58 board that's simply preventing it from seeing the drive, due to some modification to the MBR or something that Synology DSM does to drives it manages. I'm in the process of updating the ex58 firmware, on the off chance that the slightly newer beta bios that's out there may have fixed this issue (fixed may not be the right word, this is a pretty edge-case, um, case). That turns out to be a huge beat down because the native utilities recognize 1MB BIOSes but the beta BIOS is a 2MB BIOS, requiring Windows to run a Windows BIOS flasher, but I don't have Windows. I may have to actually install Windows 10 to a spare drive to upgrade the BIOS. Alternatively, re-initialize the drives. 

 

You asked DSM version, it was the latest supported on the system, 5.2 I think. By "unreadable" I mean, when you attach a drive in a GUI-unsupported format to Mac OS it puts up a dialog saying "this disk is unreadable, intialize ignore or eject". So as you say, they're formatted Linux partitions which Mac OS's GUI-native drive mounter doesn't recognize (you can issue terminal commands to mount it).

 

I'm intrigued by the idea of setting up the Xpen on another drive and hot-mounting the DS410 drives. As this is a build-a-box what does that look like: get the GUI running on another drive with the DS410 drives installed but the SATA cables disconnected? Then plug in each SATA cable? Or have each drive connected to SATA bus but not have power, and plug in power? When I hot connect to my DS1515+ I just insert the drive which connects SATA and power at the same time. Not sure it would survive a reboot since SATA detection would presumably fail again, unless, possibly the upgrade to DSM 6 re-modifies the drives such that they BIOS SATA detection firmware routine can now see them (or I hot plug each time, ug).

 

At any rate thanks again for all the responses. Great community and I'm glad to be a part of it.

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