Motherboard Replacement and ZFS RAID

Hello, I woke up this morning to my pfSense box down. I tested each of the components and determined it was the board. I have a second same board onhand and have replaced it with all the components back in the way they were with the former board.

I set the BIOS back to AHCI as ZFS RAID1 is configured.

Upon startup I get the following:

F1 ?

F2 FreeBSD

F5 Drive 1

F6 PXE

Boot: F5

F1 ?

F2 FreeBSD

F5 Drive 2

F6 PXE

Boot: F2 ###############################################…continuously…

Is this a rebuild or is the system dead?

I did backup my entire configuration after the last change but I always hold my breath when restoring. I presume this route would require simply installing pfSense again, configuring the LAN/WAN and then restoring from the past backup?

Please advise if the continuous ############## is a rebuild or if the above manual reinstall is the way to go. Thank you.

Tagged: RAID

Raid data recovery

All Replies

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

Jace Elric

Participant

February 27, 2026 at 9:11 am

This does not appear to be a ZFS rebuild. A ZFS resilver only starts after the system has fully booted and the pool is imported, and it would not show as continuous hash symbols at the FreeBSD boot screen. The repeated ” output suggests the system is failing during the bootloader or kernel loading stage, likely due to a boot mode mismatch (UEFI vs. Legacy), incorrect boot order, or a SATA controller setting issue rather than a problem with the disks themselves. Since ZFS stores its metadata on the drives, replacing the motherboard would not break the mirror. With a current configuration backup available, the simplest and most reliable path forward is to reinstall pfSense, ensure SATA is set to AHCI, assign the WAN and LAN interfaces, and then restore the saved configuration. That should return the system to its previous state.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)