Drives functional in FreeNAS, but not listed under "Storage-->Disks"

JasonSomers

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May 26, 2020
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Hello all,

Setting up a second replication server (running 11.3-U3.1 ) - and I know the hardware is not stellar, but it doesn't need to be.
It has four SATA HDDs connected via an external USB3 enclosure. (4 x 4TB Seagate Constellation ES)

While all drives are selectable when I go to create a pool - and they are all listed when I run a "geom disk list" from console - only the last of the drives appear in the "Storage-->Disk" screen. I have tried a few combinations of different drive models - and no matter what I do, the last one is the only one seen on the"Disks" screen.

I imagine this has something to do with the fact that the drives are connected via USB3, and the most obvious answer is "Don't do that", but it seems to me that it SHOULD work... (Whether recommended or not is an entirely different question).

Thanks for your assistance!
-Jason
 

Glorious1

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Nov 23, 2014
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Interesting question, hope someone can shed light on it. But as you seem to know, experts on this forum generally recommend against USB connections for data disks.
 

Samuel Tai

Never underestimate your own stupidity
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No, it’s the same bleep thing, don’t do it, it a road full of tears...

Actually, I observed the same thing for mirror vdevs in the freenas-boot pool. Only the last USB device shows up in Storage->Disks, but both show up when you look at the boot pool status in System->Boot.
 

Samuel Tai

Never underestimate your own stupidity
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This only happens in the new GUI. The legacy GUI shows both disks.
 

JasonSomers

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May 26, 2020
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Samuel - thanks for confirming the issue. Unfortunately, I am running 11.3 and the legacy interface is no longer available.
Does anyone else have any suggestions? While I understand this is ill-advised, this does seem to be a problem with the new GUI. "geom disk list" sees the drives from the shell, but they do not appear under "Storage-->Disks".
 

bfoster

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Aug 24, 2020
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I have a very similar situation running 11.3-U4.1. I have the following setup within the Google Cloud Environment: (first experiment with FreeNas)

50 GB SSD Persistent Disk (iscsi)Freenas Image
2 TB Persistent Disk (iscsi)the first of many rotating disks
500 GB SSD Persistent Disk (iscsi)zil
375 GB local SSD (nvme)L2 ARC
375 GB local SSD (nvme)L2 ARC
375 GB local SSD (nvme)L2 ARC

Freenas boots fine, all drives appear under "gpart list", the UI shows the 2TB drive, and a single nvme drive. Any help is greatly appreciated!

-Brian
 

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Chris Moore

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May 2, 2015
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external USB3 enclosure.
No. This can never work correctly because the USB interface can only write to one disk at a time, not all disks at the same time. It will never be reliable and may not be able to work at all. The problem was less of a problem before USB-3 when the data-rate was lower. The faster data-rate just makes the problem become a problem faster. You need a real SATA controller or a SAS controller.
 
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