Hp n54l 5 drive shr is it possible?

[ma160802]

Hi I just added a 5th Hard disk in the cd rom bay of my server and connected it to the spare sata port. DSM picks up the hard disk fine but will not let me expand my current 4 disk shr raid. Should this work? or will it not work because its on a different controller? it allows me to create a new volume but wont expand the current one (which is the 4 disk shr raid).

[viper0190]

What I can say is that it is possible!

I have a n54l at home running with 6 hdd's in one shr volume.

But I don't know why DSM won't expand your volume.

[koolvn]

Might be you setup RAID that needs even number of drives; just a guess

[Dfds]

As others have said, it's definitely possible as I have 5x2tb running under SHR. Have you modified the bios & set the sata controller to AHCI mode?

[Poechi]

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Edited July 10, 2015 by Guest

[ma160802]

what are the best bios setting to run ?

[ma160802]

I forgot to mention that I have also done the bios mod

[ma160802]

As others have said, it's definitely possible as I have 5x2tb running under SHR. Have you modified the bios & set the sata controller to AHCI mode?

 

yes I have done the bios mod .... I also checked under bios and AHCI mod was enabled. The strange thing that I noticed is that with 5 drives installed the ahci picks up the drives in this order is this the way yours is? im using the 4 normal hd bays plus the cdrom bay.. Also turning AHCI made no difference

[viper0190]

My Bios settings are:

Chipset > Southbridge Configuration > SB SATA Configuration

OnChip SATA Channel – Enabled

OnChip IDE Type – IDE

SATA IDE Combined Mode = Disabled

SATA EPS on all PORT = Enabled

SATA Power on all PORT = Enabled

 

Advanced > IDE Configuration

Embedded SATA Link Rate = 3.0Gbps MAX

 

Nothing else.

What do you mean with “will not let me expand” can’t you click the button (grey out) or can you and nothing happens?

[ma160802]

ok so just a quick update I just removed the whole volume all together and recreated a new one using the 5 drives and its working . I don't know why it didn't want to expand the disk array , it may have not liked all the different size hard drives. I was using 2 x 4tb 2x 1tb and 1x 1.5tb in the cdrom bay which was the one I was trying to get to expand. What also happened which was a bit strange was that I removed one of the 1tb drives which made up 4 disk shr raid (which then change the shr to degraded status), and then replaced it with the spare 1.5tb from the cdrom bay which invoked the repair of the shr raid which fixed the shr raid again. But when I reinserted the original 1tb which was out of drive bay 4 and placed it into the cdrom bay to try and expand it again it totally crashed the shr raid hence the reason why i"m rebuilding the volume from scratch.

[ma160802]

What I can say is that it is possible!

I have a n54l at home running with 6 hdd's in one shr volume.

But I don't know why DSM won't expand your volume.[/quote

 

Just wondering how are you running the 6th drive in your server? By the way I'm running the same bios settings . if you look at my screen shot does your ahci slot 4 show as not detected ?

[viper0190]

I use this adapter ( http://www.amazon.de/dp/B0036FPES4 ) and a external esata cable.

N54L esata --> esata cable --> esata/sata adpter --> hdd 6 intern

[viper0190]

In my ahci settings I get all ports 0-5 shown as Hard Disk.

I hope this info helps you.

[ma160802]

In my ahci settings I get all ports 0-5 shown as Hard Disk.

I hope this info helps you.

 

what version of the bios mod did you install ? is there a link that you followed to mod your bios ? Apart from the bios mod that you did , did you have to change anything in dsm ? my concern is that my bios is picking up the drives like this also it seems like some of my issues my be coming from bios. I may reflash it with ur bios version

[Poechi]

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Edited July 10, 2015 by Guest

[ma160802]

I just flashed the bios again and its the same .

[ma160802]

I''ve reflashed the bios with the latest version (10.01.2013) but the bios is still reserving port 4 for the external esata , is this normal?

[dasrot]

On 10/10/2014 at 6:11 AM, ma160802 said:

ok so just a quick update I just removed the whole volume all together and recreated a new one using the 5 drives and its working . I don't know why it didn't want to expand the disk array , it may have not liked all the different size hard drives. I was using 2 x 4tb 2x 1tb and 1x 1.5tb in the cdrom bay which was the one I was trying to get to expand. What also happened which was a bit strange was that I removed one of the 1tb drives which made up 4 disk shr raid (which then change the shr to degraded status), and then replaced it with the spare 1.5tb from the cdrom bay which invoked the repair of the shr raid which fixed the shr raid again. But when I reinserted the original 1tb which was out of drive bay 4 and placed it into the cdrom bay to try and expand it again it totally crashed the shr raid hence the reason why i"m rebuilding the volume from scratch.

 

I know this is way late, but in case anyone else is having this issue I believe it has to do with the following:

"The capacity of the drive you wish to add must be equal to or larger than the largest drive in the volume or disk group, or be equal to any of the drives in the volume or disk group. For example, if your SHR volume is composed of three drives – 2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB respectively – then the capacity of the new drive must be at least 2 TB or equal to 1.5 TB or 1 TB."

 

So in your case, the 1.5TB drive was neither larger than the largest drive in the volume or equal to any of the drives.