Possible to replace a SATA pool drive using USB?

[scholztec]

Hi, and thanks in advance for the help.

I have an 8-disk RAIDZ2 pool in a Silverstone DS380. For bonus points, the pool is encrypted using a passphrase. Though I know this complicates things somewhat, I have a feeling that this will be the lesser of the issues.

Two of the drives in the pool are 7200rpm, and are causing heat issues. I would like to replace them (with 5400rpm) with minimum risk to data (i.e. replace without offlining until resilver is complete). As I have no free ports on my HBA, I was hoping to achieve this using an external USB dock. I would like to resilver the drive externally (over USB3), then move it inside the server, physically replacing the disk. I can always just offline and resilver, but I'd rather not tempt fate if it can be avoided.

My searches did not come up with anything resembling this situation, and my gut feeling is that it cannot be done. Apologies in advance if I missed an obvious solution to this. I will now humbly await my spanking from Cyberjock.

Justin

 

[danb35]

I can't think of any reason it shouldn't work. But don't you have motherboard SATA ports available?

 

[Stux]

It should work fine as a temporary situation.

 

[DrKK]

I mean, ok.

Everyone in the community knows that attaching drives via USB for ZFS purposes results in all kinds of crazy fandango with relatively high probability. I'd personally think offlining the drive in a RAID-Z2 and replacing it direct to a SATA port is actually less of a risk than involving external drives mounted on USB.

But what do I know.