Move ZFS USB 3 drive to SATA?

[Philip Robar]

I spent a couple of hours trying to find an answer to this question via Google and was unsuccessful so I'm asking here.

On other operating systems like Windows, OS X, and (I think) Linux you can take an HD out of a USB case and connect it to an IDE (based on personal experience) or SATA (I think I've done this) interface and the drive just works with all of its data still intact.

Recently I tried to move a ZFS formatted 3 TB SATA Western Digital HD from it's (WD provided) USB3 case to SATA and neither FreeNAS 9.2.1.x, 9.2.2/9.3 nor 10 could not see the pool so as to import it--regardless of whether or not I exported the drive first. I.e. "zpool import" returns no results. (I was actually hoping that I wouldn't even need to export/import it.) Was I wrong in expecting this to work?

Here's my dmesg(1) output, filtered for what I think is the relevant stuff:

Drive in USB3 case:

Code:

xhci0: <XHCI (generic) USB 3.0 controller> mem 0xd0600000-0xd0601fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
xhci0: 64 byte context size.
usbus0 on xhci0
usbus0: 5.0Gbps Super Speed USB v3.0
uhub0: <0x1912 XHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 3.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
ugen0.3: <Western Digital> at usbus0
umass1: <MSC Bulk-Only Transport> on usbus0
umass1:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
umass1:5:1:-1: Attached to scbus5
da1 at umass-sim1 bus 1 scbus5 target 0 lun 0
da1: <WD My Book 1140 1022> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-6 device 
da1: Serial Number 574343315430383235353235
da1: 400.000MB/s transfers
da1: 2861556MB (732558336 4096 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 45599C)
da1: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
ses0 at umass-sim1 bus 1 scbus5 target 0 lun 1
ses0: <WD SES Device 1022> Fixed Enclosure Services SCSI-6 device 
ses0: Serial Number 574343315430383235353235
ses0: 400.000MB/s transfers
ses0: SCSI-3 ENC Device

Drive attached directly to SATA:

Code:

ada2: <WDC WD30EZRX-00DC0B0 80.00A80> ATA-9 SATA 3.x device
ada2: Serial Number WD-WCC1T0825525
ada2: 150.000MB/s transfers (SATA, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)
ada2: 2861588MB (5860533168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)
ada2: quirks=0x1<4K>
ada2: Previously was known as ad7

In case it matters the motherboard is an Intel DG41TY so it has an Intel® G41 Express Chipset, with:
• Intel® 82G41 Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH)
• Intel® 82801GB I/O Controller Hub (ICH7)

The USB3 card is a Bytecc PCIe BT-PEU310 using an NEC chipset.

Note: For the curious, this motherboard with an Intel Celeron 450 (64 bit Core architecture, not P4 era), USB3 card and HD in its USB3 case using just 4GB of non-ECC memory and the MB's Realtek RTL8111D Gb NIC have worked without error as a simple home file server (SMB and AFP) for several months. And just so I don't get slammed by the powers that be, I'm currently in the process of moving all of its data to "real" server hardware. It just would have been nice if I could have moved the drive from one interface to another instead of having to copy 6TB of data. (Once to another external USB3 drive--whose case I don't want to crack until I trust it enough to be sure that I don't need to return it--and then back to the original drive, now attached to SATA.)

 

[no_connection]

A simple USB to SATA bridge would/should not have any problem being moved around.

But if it has a NIC and 4GB ram it does not sound like a simple bridge. And if you can plug in both at the same time it definitely does some drive emulation.
And the mention of SCSI points to the same thing I think.

*edit* and it would help tho know that USB3 drive you are talking about.

 

[Philip Robar]

My server is a PC with an external USB only drive, not a NAS box that can also be a USB drive.

 

[Philip Robar]

I found the problem. I took a magnifying glass to my SATA/USB bridge board and searched on what I hoped was the model number. Fortunately it was, as there is not any other useful information on the board--other than chip labels. Anyway, it turns out that the board is doing on-the-fly hardware encryption so the data is only readable via the bridge. Mystery solved.

(I assume that WD provides Windows and Mac software to provide password protected access to the drive's encrypted data, but since I wasn't going to use the drive on either of these systems I didn't pay any attention to the software that came with it.)

 

[trionic]

The MyBook USB bridge will encrypt all data written to the drive, whether you ask for it or not.

When I was using MyBooks I specifically did not install any Western Digital software. When time came to transfer the drive into a tower case, I found that the drive showed up as "uninitialised" along with a helpful message from Windoze asking me I would like to format it.

Put the USB bridge back on the drive and hey presto, all your data's still there.

The only solution is to copy all your data from the MyBook to another hard disk.