Can I physically move disc connections around?

[Lucien]

Is it possible to move hard drives from one set of SATA ports to another while keeping the data/zpool intact? Say I have them currently connected to motherboard ports, and wanted to switch them to be connected via a HBA. Or vice versa. From reading the manual, I figure what I want to do is:

1) Export the volume from Storage|Volumes|View All Volumes
2) Power down and move drive connections to new ports
3) Import the volume via Storage|Volumes|Auto Import Volume
OR
3) Import the volume via Storage|Volumes|Import Volume

Is there any difference between the two? It looks like Auto Import Volume will automatically use the existing volume (zpool?) name, while the other allows one to specify a new one.

Also, is there any need to keep the drives in any relative order? ie If the first disk is ada0 and second is ada1, would they then become adb0 and adb1 (?) respectively?

 

[warri]

Each disk is identified by an unique identifier, you can check this in the "View All Volumes" - "View disks" section of the GUI. I have not tried to switch the connections, but I guess it should be alright.

 

[ProtoSD]

Hi Lucien,

Switching individual connections on the same controller is ok. Moving *some* to a different controller could confuse the GUI/database, but you shouldn't lose any data. If you want to move all of them like you said above, that will work as long as you export your pool first, otherwise the GUI/database gets confused. You seem to have the correct sequence of steps outlined though...

 

[Lucien]

Thanks guys! I'm going to give it a try this weekend. Should have some free time then.

One more thing though, would/should I need to do anything via the CLI? Not sure if exporting via the GUI is enough.

 

[ProtoSD]

You could do a "zpool status -v". Also here's a link to some useful commands for managing disks from the command line in FreeBSD:
http://protosd.blogspot.com/2011/12/useful-commands-for-diagnosingmanaging.html

It's a good reference, but I still need to update it a little.