Pool is gone and now it cannot be found or imported

[zpiracha]

I started using TrueNAS after using QNAP for 10 years. It was very difficult to setup. I managed to set it up with one drive for storage and one for boot. I setup the pool and shared folder. All was working fine. I installed emby and was able to steam my content. However, today I was not able to access my content and upon investigation I found the NAS rebooted and my pool is no longer there. I read here that we can export / disconnect and reimport it. I tried that and after export, I can't even find in GUI or cli. I need help before I wipe this clean and start over again. This should not be that difficult. My pool has data that I can certainly use but I don't mind using it as I do have a backup. Why is this TrueNAS so spotty and not user friendly.

 

[somethingweird]

Welcome! - it be nice if you would tell us your hardware?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Hey @zpiracha

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with TrueNAS. Can you please provide some details about the hardware you are using?

Note that a single-drive pool is cautioned against during creation, as it doesn't offer fault-tolerance in case of a drive failure. Importing the pool should be an option through the UI, but if the pool does not exist in the "Import Pools" dialog we may need to troubleshoot further.

 

[zpiracha]

Hey @zpiracha

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with TrueNAS. Can you please provide some details about the hardware you are using?

Note that a single-drive pool is cautioned against during creation, as it doesn't offer fault-tolerance in case of a drive failure. Importing the pool should be an option through the UI, but if the pool does not exist in the "Import Pools" dialog we may need to troubleshoot further.

Hey @zpiracha

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with TrueNAS. Can you please provide some details about the hardware you are using?

Note that a single-drive pool is cautioned against during creation, as it doesn't offer fault-tolerance in case of a drive failure. Importing the pool should be an option through the UI, but if the pool does not exist in the "Import Pools" dialog we may need to troubleshoot further.

Yes, I am running a Dell Optiplex 990 with two drives. One is for booting the nas and the other is storing the files. Both drives are sad using direct sata cable on the board. It has i7 CPU and 16 GB RAM. Let me know if there are any specific details required.

 

[zpiracha]

SSD*

 

[Arwen]

...
Why is this TrueNAS so spotty and not user friendly.

Part of the reason is that TrueNAS was / is written for the Data Center Enterprise market. That does not excuse somethings. However, that said, TrueNAS SCALE is a work in progress, (though pretty far along). Reasonably reliable, but things are changing, including where items are in the GUI.

Another reason for un-reliability is hardware. Thus, the 2 requests for hardware details.

OpenZFS tends to require more memory and a bit more CPU than other file systems and RAID schemes. Further, TrueNAS SCALE & Core can't support every variation of hardware. For example, some SATA expansion chips or PCIe boards tend to be either lower performance or less reliable. Under MS-Windows they might work just fine, because the chip maker has worked on the chip driver til it was reliable.

Edit:
An Intel i7 CPU and 16GByte of RAM should be fine.
Direct SATA connections to the system board should also be fine.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The Optiplex 990 does have the option of Intel software-RAID, but the default setting on the BIOS is (to my understanding) disabled.

Assuming you are using TrueNAS SCALE, if you navigate to the Storage page, and then click Import Pool, is your previously exported pool shown?

If not, what do you see if you go to System Settings -> Shell and then enter the command zpool import with no additional parameters?

 

[zpiracha]

The Optiplex 990 does have the option of Intel software-RAID, but the default setting on the BIOS is (to my understanding) disabled.

Assuming you are using TrueNAS SCALE, if you navigate to the Storage page, and then click Import Pool, is your previously exported pool shown?

If not, what do you see if you go to System Settings -> Shell and then enter the command zpool import with no additional parameters?

I am not using raid. I don't want to use raid. I only want to use a single SSD drive for data.

 

[zpiracha]

The Optiplex 990 does have the option of Intel software-RAID, but the default setting on the BIOS is (to my understanding) disabled.

Assuming you are using TrueNAS SCALE, if you navigate to the Storage page, and then click Import Pool, is your previously exported pool shown?

If not, what do you see if you go to System Settings -> Shell and then enter the command zpool import with no additional parameters?

I am not using raid. I don't want to use raid. I only want to use a single SSD drive for data.

Yes, I am using TrueNAS Scale. When I go to storage dashboard and click import pool, I do not see anything in the dropdown. When using shell from systems settings and entering command zpool import, I get no pool available to import. Earlier today I read an article about exporting pool and importing it. When I exported, it was exported but I can't find a way to import it.

 

[Arwen]

Understood. I too have a home ZFS pool that has no redundancy. It is for my various media, on my media server. I do have good backups.

If you can supply the output of the zpool import command we can assist further.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

lsblk might be helpful, too.

 

[zpiracha]

Understood. I too have a home ZFS pool that has no redundancy. It is for my various media, on my media server. I do have good backups.

If you can supply the output of the zpool import command we can assist further.

I did, it says "no pool available to import."

If you want a a screenshot I can share that as well.

 

[HoneyBadger]

We trust you on the "No pools available" error. The output of lsblk -f as @Patrick M. Hausen suggests will be valuable, as it will show you all detected block devices and a simple partition layout.