Fix Xpenology problems viewing internal hard drives as esata hard drives

Synology NAS is nice, well manufactured, and got one of the best NAS operating systems (Diskstation Manager or “DSM”). They are also, like almost every prebuilt NAS, very weak in terms of performance.

The solution is to install DSM on your own server/computer with Xpenology. It’s like what Hackintosh is to OS X when you create a Mac on a PC, but for the Synology NAS OS Diskstation Manager.

I had one problem after installing DSM with Xpenology: my server has 10 internal HDD, but I could see only 6 of them in DSM. After searching everywhere, I found that DSM see these 4 drives as eSATA drives instead of SATA.

Here is how i fixed that.

Enable ssh connection to the NAS

On the NAS, go to Control Panel >  Terminal & SNMP, check Enable SSH sevice and click Apply.

Find what the system detects at boot time

Ssh to your nas with the root user, and get the booting messages. In my case, I have a volume called “volume1” and a folder called “media”, so i’ll put the created file in it and download it in DSM. My NAS has the local IP address 192.168.1.17.

ssh root@192.168.1.17
dmesg > /volume1/media/dmesg.txt

 

How many hard drives?

In this file, you’ll have to find the number of SATA drives that the OS detects by searching for “ata”. See in the capture below that the “ata” with the highest value is ata26. That means the system detects 26 HDD.

 

How many usb?

Now search for usb ports detected by the OS. Search for “usb”. You can see the sentence “new usb BUS registered, assigned to bus number X”. Find the highest bus number. In my case this is 6, so the system detects 6 usb ports.

Do some strange stuff with binary and hexadecimal values

Create a text file and paste this in it:

0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ==> Usb ports
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ==> Sata ports

Starting form the right, change 0 to 1 for each sata drive recognized by your system. For me it is 26. I replace 26 “0” by 26 “1” starting from the right.

0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ==> Usb ports
0000 0000 0000 0000 0011 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 ==> Sata ports (26 drives)

Do the same thing for usb ports, but do not overlap the “1” you have just placed before. For me, 6 usb ports.

0000 0000 0000 1111 1100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ==> Usb ports (6 usb) 
0000 0000 0000 0000 0011 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 ==> Sata ports (26 drives)

Go to an online binary to hexadecimal converter like this one, and convert your bin values to hex values. My values gave me that:

0000 0000 0000 1111 1100 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ==> Usb ports (6 usb) ==> fc000000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0011 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 ==> Sata ports (26 drives) ==> 3ffffff

Update the synology conf files

Ssh to your NAS, make a backup of the existing conf files in case something goes wrong.

ssh root@192.168.1.17
cp /etc/synoinfo.conf /etc/backup_synoinfo.conf
cp /etc.defaults/synoinfo.conf /etc.defaults/backup_synoinfo.conf

In these 2 files (/etc/synoinfo.conf and /etc.defaults/synoinfo.conf), find these values and modify them with the hex values you get before:

# first file to modify nano /etc/synoinfo.conf
# second file to modify nano /etc.defaults/synoinfo.conf
# in these two files, find these three values...

esataportcfg="0x1000"
usbportcfg="0xffe000"
internalportcfg="0xfff"

# ... and replace with the hex values you get before.
# please note that eSata ports are completely desactivated,
# who use this ports anyway...

esataportcfg="0x0000"
usbportcfg="fc000000"
internalportcfg="3ffffff"

Check if everything works

No need to reboot your NAS. In DSM go to Storage Manager > HDD/SSD and you should be able to see all your hard drives now. For me, 10 HDD. In the capture below, I have one drive that crashed, but it is not related to this post. There is also 2 SSD and one usb key. The four HDD that where missing are marked as “Loading”, because I am extending the volume “volume2” with the 4 previously missing HDD.

4 thoughts on “Fix Xpenology problems viewing internal hard drives as esata hard drives

  1. Xavi

    Nice Job. I have a question for you:

    I want to overhaul an older Hp Proliant Ml350 server with SCSI disks. Can be xpenology installed on the server and run DSM ? I have red that xpenology only accept SATA disks. Is it true ?

    I await your news, greetings.

    Reply
  2. Flodders

    Hi
    Thanks for the great how to.

    What i was missing is the information how to become root after login via ssh (sudo -i). Then the nano comand did not work on my DSM 6.1.5-15254, i used the vi comand to edit the files, what works for me fine.

    After that i needed to a complet restart.

    Thanks again and i hope i did help some people with my info 😉

    Reply

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