XigmaNAS

I have installed NAS4FREE 9.1.0.1 on a hard drive (5GB, 15 years old [I know, that was dumb]) with a 40GB data drive. It was working perfectly until the 5gb drive failed. I should've known. Anyway, I scavenged a 120gb drive to use as a data drive while the 40gb drive would be used as the main drive + data partition for backups/upgrades of the system disk. Unfortunately, no matter what disk I try to install on, it keeps saying it failed to write standard label, failed to create bsd label on ada0s1, there was a problem during initializing the destination disk, etc. I have tried switching channels, changing master-slave, among other things. I can't figure it out; please help!

p.s. My equipment is ancient

Hi
Old IDE hard disk not works on FreeBSD9.x , or work not stable, because FreeBSD 9.x use camcontrol instead atacontrol.

I don't understand why it worked with the
15 year old 5gb drive and the 40gb drive then, both
Ide. I don't have any sata disks to spare. What is the latest release that does support ide?

FreeBsd work with modern IDE, such compact flash, connected to IDE. Old disk not work. I have ~5 small hard disk, which work with msdos or Freebsd6.x 7.x, but not work with FreeBSD 9.x
My lab server use compact flash, connected to IDE as system disk.

I use these
http://www.logicsupply.com/components/f ... h-modules/
I have had no trouble with small Hdd when I have used them to store the embedded OS

What if I use the size limit feature? I can use a jumper to limit the capacity of the system drive. It doesn't sound like that will work, though. I need to know the latest version that has the largest support for IDE drives, with atacontrol.

Is there a way to use an oldversion freebsd with nas4free 9.1.0.1?
Or, what is the last nas4free version with freebsd that supports atacontrol?

If I had access to a board and drives with SATA, I would utilize those instaed of IDE; but, I have no choice as I have a very limited supply of components.

some very old IDE drives are not good but almost every one I have tried works for me with the version I use [see signature line]
a couple of demos with old hardware [32 bit]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvguvOwi ... e=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT0VTwr_ ... e=youtu.be

I have tried using the latest 9.1.0.1.847 and it doesn't work for my IDE drives. I guess I'll just have to look for the last version of nas4free 8 if it even exists. Hopefully that will work.

Current specs are:
ecs l7vmm2
1100mhz Duron
1024 mb DDR
40gb maxtor
120gb seagate
3c905b-txnm 10/100
CD drive to install nas4free

If I could boot from USB, I would install on that, but it's so old that it can't.

This might be a stupid question, but is the disk and/or IDE cable any good?

From what I can tell the error looks to be related to DMA. It could be your old 5GB drive did not support DMA transfers and so you never had issues. Newer drives support DMA transfers. Possible that NAS4Free is detecting support for DMA and but hardware is not properly supporting it?

Can you check DMA settings in BIOS? Also are you using a 40 pin IDE cable or a 80 pin IDE cable. From what I remember 80 pin IDE was required for higher DMA modes to work. Can you load NAS4Free in Safe Mode and see if that helps?

Let us know.

00Roush

Although I am fairly proficient with computers, I don't know the difference between 40pin and 80pin. Is it just that there's one vs two drives? I am using 2drive ide cables. I have tried using two different cables and neither have any problems. I'll look into the DMA in bios later today, probably in a couple hours.

Both disks and ide cables are good.

BTW I really appreciate your help!

This is like the system drive I'm using http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0014GQNZA
This is like the data drive I'll be using http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148690

Oh I see now! The page on the link explains everything! I don't think I have any of those laying around, but I'll search for one somewhere.
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Cable.htm

edit: By some odd luck I found one of these 80-pin IDE cables! I have a total of 2: one I found not in use, and one I found in my MC server. I'll put one on the system drive channel and then I'll try it. Now I can finally take advantage of cable select! That's SO much easier than trying to figure out pin configs.

edit: Also, there's nothing in the bios about DMA.

edit: Looks like I'll have to have both channels on 80-pin IDE cables. I'll exchange a 40-pin for the 80-pin in my MC server. It shouldn't make much of a difference, except maybe with backup times.

edit: I took the data disk off of a channel so just the CD and system HDD are plugged in on separate channels on 80-pin cables. It boots so far, now I just need to see if it'll install. Sorry for all the edits :/

It worked! I was finally able to install EMBEDDED version of nas4free onto the disk! Previously I could only install FULL version (before my drive crashed). You guys were so much help! I very much appreciate it. It seem I nicked my wrist putting the new cable in though...

blockofdynamite wrote:It worked! It seem I nicked my wrist putting the new cable in though...

ware those cases made by Ginsu Cutlery
you are not the first


you will find the Embedded, which operates from ram, inherently faster/trouble free
but available RAM is less by a bit over 200 Mb

also [not required] install the drive and set it to spin down in five minutes
do not mount the drive.
on booting it will load the OS to ram and after 5 spin down
changes to the config will cause it to spin up and record the changes
and after 5 spin down again. saves wear and power

blockofdynamite wrote:It worked! I was finally able to install EMBEDDED version of nas4free onto the disk! Previously I could only install FULL version (before my drive crashed). You guys were so much help! I very much appreciate it. It seem I nicked my wrist putting the new cable in though...

Glad to hear you got this working and glad we could help.

Cheers,
00Roush

One more question. Is there any benefit to having an 80 pin cable on a single drive?

Yes! The 80 wire cables support the higher UDMA modes. The drives you are using almost certainly support UDMA modes 5/6 (UDMA 100/133) and would work best with the 80 wire cables. If your interested I found the parallel ata wiki helpful... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA.

00Roush

out of the 4 ide disks...I installed...
2 of them worked OK and still is working (UFS / SOFTRAID / Seagates / 160gb+200gb)
-currently used to RSYNC folders and non browsable
1 of them semi (cant format to UFS) //// Samsung 80gb >>> will keep working on this.
1 might be dead (Maxtor 80gb)

most others are SATA drives which work fine (UFS)
2.5 Laptop drives (Hitachi 100gb + WD 320gb + FUJITSU 80gb)
3.5 SATA (WD 320gb AAKS)

Some formatting problems I have solved by using partition magic to first format to ext3 then delete the partition.
that usually wipes what ever is causing the drive to be rejected for formatting

yngw13 wrote:1 of them semi (cant format to UFS) //// Samsung 80gb >>> will keep working on this.

Try delete partitions with dd

alexey123 wrote:

yngw13 wrote:1 of them semi (cant format to UFS) //// Samsung 80gb >>> will keep working on this.

Try delete partitions with dd

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/yourSamsungdrive bs=512 count=10000

THANKS ALEXEY FOR THE TIP!!!

script for doing the same but a bit secure: http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0129