SATA connection moves

[Tronceon]

Hello everyone,

Very new to home servers so I may not have searched the correct terms.

Currently running TrueNAS Core (13.0-U3.1) via a VM on Proxmox (7.3-3).

I need to relocate my SATA connections to a PCIE card; however, the drives are currently missing heir SN info under the Storage/Disk screen. Can I still export my pools with the missing info and rebuild them after the connection moves?

Using a dell precision 3620
Intel I7-6700
32 Gig RAM
AS Media Tech SATA card sold by Ownsun (cheap newegg find)


Backstory:

At the time of setup I passed through my drives directly to TrueNAS and setup a NFS and SAMBA pool without issue. I did notice the SNs and drive IDs didn’t show up in TrueNAS correctly; however, Proxmox was showing the info was passed correctly.

Fast forward and I’m looking at expanding my TrueNAS with a bulk media pool and additional drives. Pass the drives as before, getting the incorrect SNs ext. again for the new drives, but the other drives are now missing their SNs so I can’t setup additional pools.



As my motherboard doesn’t have enough SATA connections; I’m going to use a PCI card to expand my port count and was thinking of moving all my storage drives over to the card. I’d then pass that through in order for TrueNAS to have direct access to the drives without the need to pass each one at a time.

 

[joeschmuck]

You should not need to Export your pool for this operation.
If you pass through the entire controller then it should just work. If that is not the case then Proxmox does not work the same as ESXi (what I'm using). I don't think you need to export your pool unless you are importing it into a new environment/configuration. Because you are using the same TrueNAS software configuration, it should just import the pool like normal regardless of how the drives are physically connected. This is part of the beauty of using TrueNAS that I like.

Think of it like this... If you have TureNAS on bare metal and it was working perfectly fine. Then you had a failure of your HBA with four drives connected and you reconnected all four drives to the motherboard SATA ports. The system will bootup and the pool will work just like it always had done.

Hope this helps, and I do not use Proxmox but it should be the same idea as ESXi for this aspect. Pass through the entire controller and that is the best way to do it.

 

[Tronceon]

Thank you Joe.. It did indeed work without having to export my pools first. Wasn't exactly sure how the system handles pool config data so wanted to make sure. My drive SN and smart functions are now present since passing through my PCI card.

 

[joeschmuck]

Glad I could help.