I recently bought myself parts to build a freeNAS server.
iStarUSA 4U 8bay chassis 4x4TB HGST enterprise HDD SATA III Supermicro itx xeon D-1541 8 core 16gb ddr4 server ram 256gb crucial NVMe SSD Seasonic 600w psu
I’ve got the ssd in and the os loaded. My issue is the HDD(s) causes the system to instantly power off when trying to boot. When I first got my stuff the hdds where doa. Sent them back. One of the hot swap cages had a bad board and caught on fire. Got both of those replaced. My issue still persist.
Chassis aside, I have the hdd hooked up directly into the motherboard and the SATA power and data cables connected. New system powers on for a split second then instantly powers off. I have tried putting one of the hdd in my workstation but the symptoms are the same. Powers on for a split-second then powers off. Tried on my test bench same thing. The only way to get a drive to boot up is using a eSATA docker with external power.
A. Short curcuit, make sure all your mounting points on the Sys B have screws and securely fastened, also there are no extra stand offs touching the back of the sys B. make sure all power connectors in the system are properly attached.
B. Your PSU cant supply enough power to all the devices
try running it with just 1 drive, does it work? try each drive 1 by 1, then add drives 1 by 1, find the failure point.
As symptoms move with HDD to other systems it sounds like it is HDD. It sounds like short circuit with in it (all 4? - still possible if for example all of them were having bath in water during transport or in warehouse - just guessing here). External docker is usually powered with 2 pin cable and simply might not ground the external metal case of HDD (in contrary to the server chassis and properly screwed in HDDs).
So I'm at home now where I can actually take another look at this server.
My guess is the drives are bad this will be the second time I'm having to ship back 4 drives.
I have this chassis.
Another thing I found is that without HDDs inside the hotswap bays it does the same thing. Fans spin for a second then powers off. I have to reset the psu to get it to do it again. My first server build and I'm having really bad luck.
That would suggest that the hotswap bays cause the problem - I assume that even without HDDs in them you still got power and data cable connected to them? Usually Hoptswap bays have some small PCB board that connects HDDs with cables outside of the bays. It does not explain at all why connecting HDD to other workstation/server cause the same problem.