External USB 5 Drive Bay Enclosure

[Thousandbuckle]

Hello all, I just got my hands on a Star Tech USB 3.0 / eSATA 5-Bay SATA III Hard Drive Enclosure with UASP – 5-Bay SATA 6 Gbps Enclosure Product ID: S355BU33ERM. My intention was to connect this to my existing FreeNAS box to increase my available storage capacity. I would populate it with 5 4TB WD Red drives in a RaidZ (Raid 5) configuration. The box is connected via USB 3.0 controller card to the box and as a test I put in 3 drives to see how they show up in freenas.

Here comes the question, when looking under View Disks I only see one of the drives listed as da3 and the other two dont show up. If I go into the Volume Manager to create a new volume under available disks all three drives are available. The one 1TB drive in Volume Manager shows da1 and the other two 160GB drives show as multipath disk1 da3. Why dont the 3 drive show up separatley in View Disks and what is Multipath that it has the 2 160 GB drives grouped together? These are just test drives before I put in the WD Reds.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Ericloewe]

eSATA 5-Bay SATA III Hard Drive Enclosure

Those things are universally atrocious.

What mode are you using that in?

 

[Thousandbuckle]

What do you mean by "mode"? It is connected via USB 3.0 to the PC if that is what you mean.

What is a better solution to use instead?

 

[pirateghost]

What do you mean by "mode"? It is connected via USB 3.0 to the PC if that is what you mean.

What is a better solution to use instead?

External drives over USB is a recipe for failure in freenas. It's recommended you put the drives in your server and connect them to a HBA

 

[Thousandbuckle]

I have never used HBA but have seen alot of talk about it. If I understand correctly, HBA controller cards go in the PC/Server and connects to some kind of external storage device. The HBA controller card I am able to find but I am not sure what type of external device it is connecting to. Could you tell me of some common cost effective HBA setups?

 

[pirateghost]

An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. They do not necessarily mean an external device, as many of us use internal only HBAs. Please read the stickies in the hardware forum.

 

[jgreco]

I have never used HBA but have seen alot of talk about it. If I understand correctly, HBA controller cards go in the PC/Server and connects to some kind of external storage device. The HBA controller card I am able to find but I am not sure what type of external device it is connecting to. Could you tell me of some common cost effective HBA setups?

"HBA" just means Host Bus Adapter. It's like "SATA controller" except without the "toy/consumer" connotations.

Your external USB/eSATA array is a toy, and a dangerous one, because it will hide most of what's going on from FreeNAS, which is very bad.

Generally speaking you want all your disks and your NAS to be powered by the same power source if at all possible. For any number of disks a dozen or less, you should always be able to accomplish this with readily available PC chassis that are designed for the task, though some are better than others.

 

[danb35]

Why did you start two threads, in the same forum, about the same device, within 5 minutes of each other? https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...rnal-5-bay-drive-enclosure-good-or-bad.43124/

 

[Thousandbuckle]

What is the best motherboard option for a maximum of 12 drives that is reliable but cost effective? I have cases, drives, and power supply, just need a low cost reliable MB that would support a maximum of 12 drives.

This post was related to a support question about the external box and the other was a question about any ones experience using it. Sorry I thought it was better etiquette to have separate discussion in different posts.

 

[pirateghost]

What is the best motherboard option for a maximum of 12 drives that is reliable but cost effective? I have cases, drives, and power supply, just need a low cost reliable MB that would support a maximum of 12 drives.

This post was related to a support question about the external box and the other was a question about any ones experience using it. Sorry I thought it was better etiquette to have separate discussion in different posts.

Why would you need a new motherboard?

Just get an hba

 

[danb35]

If you wanted to get a new motherboard, the best option would likely be the SuperMicro X10SL7-F. But as @pirateghost says, if your hardware is otherwise suitable, just add a SAS HBA (the go-to recommendations being the IBM M1015, cross-flashed to IT mode, or the LSI 9211-8i; either can be had for $100 or less on eBay). That will add support for up to 8 drives directly, or over 100 via a SAS expander.

 

[Thousandbuckle]

The PC I have now Precision T3500 does not support additional internal drive space and the memory for the box is too much due to its age. At this point I am thinking to do a new build so that is why I ask about the motherboard. Looking to run Plex on it as well so I would like for it to be able to do transcoding as well for a few video streams.

Would the HPE H240 work as well? It is PCIe 3x8 which looks to be faster than the LSI card at 2x8. https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/H...ge-controller-SATA-6Gb-s-SAS-12G/3465475.aspx

 

[pirateghost]

It doesn't matter if it's faster than the LSI. What matters is compatibility.

Have you read the hardware recommendations thread?

 

[Thousandbuckle]

Sorry I have not been able to find the Hardware recommendations thread. Could you post the link you are referring to for me?

 

[pirateghost]

Sorry I have not been able to find the Hardware recommendations thread. Could you post the link you are referring to for me?

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/

It's a sticky in the hardware forums....

 

[Arwen]

I use a StarTech 2 bay USB 3 with UASP & eSATA for my backups.
It's connected via eSATA and the silly controller is set to JBOD,
(which says "Standard" on the front panel). One main goal was
a fan, which many single drive eSATA enclosures don't include.

It seems to work fine using it as a single drive external enclosure
for my monthly backups.

All that said, it's not heavily used. USB, or eSATA with expander,
(or eSATA with RAID controller), is not a good idea for permanantly
connected drives.