I have just acquired a ProLiant DL380 G5 server and I need to use the pcie slots so I want to remove the raid controller. Problem is I can't find any connector on the motherboard that I can connect the drive to. I only need 1 drive and in fact I would be happy to use an external hdd if it will boot. I have not tried it. My question is is there a connector on this server that does not include using a pcie slot? If not, can I use the DVD drive to house the 2.5" drive and will it run or I am stuck with losing a pcie slot for a facility I don't need? For the DVD drive option, I have both a 2.5" SAS SSD and SATA SSD drive lying about. I have searched here and online but most questions are about removing the raid facility etc. I want to remove the raid controller so I can use the pcie slot.
In a series of bad, hasty decisions, a HP ProLiant ML350 G6 server was bought for file server use at my place of work. The intention was to build a FreeNAS 8 server using cheap 3.5" SATA drives.
Only the HP ProLiant ML350 G6 unit we got is equipped for 2.5 SAS drives. Smooth.
2.5" SAS drives are very expensive and not roomy enough for a NAS. We can't return the (over-specced) machine either so it's currently serving as an expensive door stop.
Someone suggested that I buy a device like the "MicroStorage Multi raid box 5hdd SATA Hdd", an ESATA drive enclosure and an ESATA controller for the server. Only this device is out of stock everywhere in Northern Europe and apparently no longer manufactured.
The ProLiant ML350 G6 does have five bays for optical drives and I could probably find some parts to make 3.5" SATA hdds fit in there.
Any suggestions as to what I should do to get a functioning file FreeNAS server out of this?
EDIT: Our reseller bluntly claimed that the ML350 G6 SFF can't be converted to support LFF drives when I explicitly asked about something I thought was a drive cage replacement spare part mentioned in a manual. This answer suggests otherwise.
I recently purchased a 4-bay enclosure (Mediasonic Probox -- maybe cheap junk, but should work) with 4 2TB disks. The enclosure has both USB3 and eSATA interfaces. I originally intended to use it on USB3, but I had some trouble with that, so now I'm trying to use it with eSATA. Note that this box has no internal RAID of any kind. It is supposed to present the installed disks as individual disks.
The problem I'm having is that the Linux kernel only sees one of the 4 disks. I'm connecting it to the onboard ports of an Intel DX58SO motherboard, whose manual claims that, "They can also be used for port replication, which allows the aggregation of multiple hard drives on each of the eSATA ports."
I'm running Arch Linux, with kernel version 2.6.39.3. I am able to access one of the disks as /dev/sda (which caused its own set of problems at boot time -- it displaced my internal disks upwards by one slot), but the other three are missing entirely.
Is there something special I need to do to make Linux see the multiplier?
First, the situation: I've got a Linux computer with two eSATA drive bays that accept removable SSD drives. I'm trying to write a little GUI application that makes it easier for the user to mount/unmount/format/backup/etc the drives that he puts into these bays.
It all mostly works. One small problem, however, is that I don't know how to find out any information about what's on the inserted drive(s) until after the drives have been successfully mounted.
So, for example, if the user inserts a drive that I can't mount (e.g. because it is unformatted, or formatted with an unexpected filesystem), all my app can say about it is "Drive failed to mount".
This isn't very satisfactory, because if the drive is unformatted, the user will probably want to format it... but if the drive contains data from an unrecognized filesystem, the user will probably NOT want to format it.... or at least, I want to be able to warn him that by doing so he'll be erasing potentially valuable data.
So my question is: is there any method for querying some basic information (especially filesystem-type) from a drive that doesn't require that the drive already be mounted? Or do I just have to try to mount it with various known filesystems until one of the mount attempts succeeds, and give a vague "be careful" message if none of them do?
In case it matters, the paths I use to mount the drives in the drive bays are:
/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-2:0:0:0
/dev/disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0
So, I've tried two different RAID controllers that have external SATA connections on my Server 2008 machine. I can install the hardware, boot into Windows, install the drivers and reboot again. No problems. However, as soon as I try to use eSATA-connected drives and reboot something happens to the Windows install and I can no longer boot into Windows. I tried repairing from the command line, and the end result is that repair console tells me I have 0 Windows installations (?). I end up having no choice but to reinstall Windows to get back on track.
I must be doing something fundamentally wrong here, but I don't know what :(