The two hard drives in the USB hard drive cabinet can only recognize 1 (no raid)...

Joined
Dec 27, 2018
Messages
3
大家好。
我有一个独立供电的双盘位硬盘盒,里面放了两块500G的硬盘,通过USB3.0接口连接到我TureNAS的USB3.0插口

NAS:联想L440笔记本;16G内存;256G SSD 安装 TrueNAS;内置1Tx2 HDD镜像数据池。

问题:系统可以识别两个USB硬盘(/dev/da0、/dev/da1),但是在TrueNAS web管理界面的“磁盘”页面,只显示“da1”,看不到“da0” .

我在命令行:“zpool add droot mirror da0 da1”(droot是我的数据池),我可以扩展两个硬盘作为我的droot的镜像,但是系统会报da1有问题,不能被发现...

我该怎么办?我搜了一下论坛,几乎没有什么有用的信息,一些相关的也是2017年之前的,恐怕不适用于我的情况。

-----------------------------------

Hello everyone.
I have an independent power supply dual-bay hard drive box with two 500G hard drives in it, which are connected to the USB3.0 socket of my TureNAS through the USB3.0 interface.

NAS: Lenovo L440 notebook; 16G memory; 256G SSD with TrueNAS installed; built-in 1Tx2 HDD mirrored data pool.

Problem: The system can recognize two USB hard disks (/dev/da0, /dev/da1), but in the "Disk" page of the TrueNAS web management interface, only "da1" is displayed, but "da0" cannot be seen.

I am on the command line : "zpool add droot mirror da0 da1" (droot is my data pool), I can expand two hard disks as the mirror of my droot, but the system will report that there is a problem with da1 and cannot be found...

What should I do? I searched the forums and there is almost no useful information, some relevant ones are also from before 2017, I am afraid not applicable to my situation.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
Greetings -

Welcome to these forums.

Please note that the main forums are English language, and you are expected to post in English here. We have a section for International discussion that includes a Chinese section, and you may post in Chinese there.

As a courtesy, I have posted a Google Translate version of your original post here. Please make any followups in English here, or feel free to repost this in the Chinese section.

I have an independent power supply dual-bay hard drive box with two 500G hard drives in it, which are connected to the USB3.0 socket of my TureNAS through the USB3.0 interface.

NAS: Lenovo L440 notebook; 16G memory; 256G SSD with TrueNAS installed; built-in 1Tx2 HDD mirrored data pool.

Problem: The system can recognize two USB hard disks (/dev/da0, /dev/da1), but in the "Disk" page of the TrueNAS web management interface, only "da1" is displayed, but "da0" cannot be seen.

Correct. USB disks are not supported. Typically, USB-to-SATA adapters are poorly designed, and usually a key identifier such as serial number is hardwired to a static value. This makes it appear to TrueNAS as though it is an alternative path to the same device. See for example this thread.


These are not safe for use with TrueNAS, and this is not expected to be "fixed" as it is fundamentally broken hardware. It may be possible to get it to "work" by manually initializing the disks one at a time, partitioning them with independent UUID's, and manually creating a pool. However, TrueNAS will be unable to identify the individual drives in the pool (because this happens by serial number), and functions such as replacing drives will not work correctly and may destroy your pool because TrueNAS may overwrite the wrong drive, since they both have the same serial.
 
Joined
Dec 27, 2018
Messages
3
Thank you so much! I wrote the original text of the post in Chinese, and then translated it into English using Google Translate and pasted it into the text box of the post. Maybe I also turned on Google Translate on the page where I posted the post, so the actual post was in Chinese. I’m really sorry!

I don't have much knowledge of zfs, but I noticed that when two hard disks are inserted in the hard disk cabinet, the serial numbers are the same. I guess that zfs may use the serial number of the hardware when creating the pool...

Well, thanks for your reply, I'm going to give up this hard drive enclosure.

But one more question, I still want to connect these two pieces of 500G HD to my notebook NAS. Do you have a good solution to recommend? (A 256G SSD has been inserted in an M.2 slot in the notebook, and a 1T HD is installed in the hard disk position. Another 1T HD is installed in the original optical drive position through a conversion box)
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
I’m really sorry!

No worries. We're happy to help out, and regardless of the language, people are happy to get you sorted out. It just works better if we're not making people cut and paste messages into Google Translate, because many browsers do not do this automatically.

I still want to connect these two pieces of 500G HD to my notebook NAS.

This is probably a very bad idea.

1) A laptop/notebook is a poor choice for a NAS, because it is not designed for the sort of use. Most laptops will have a bad ethernet chipset (Realtek etc), low memory, low power CPU, display will always be on, and -- perhaps most importantly for you -- is powered independently of external USB enclosures, so, if you hit a power failure, your drives disappear to your NAS.

2) USB is also hazardous due to the general poor quality of many USB-SATA bridge chip sets, and the potential for cables to be accidentally disconnected.

Having said that, you have already self-identified one of the biggest issues:

when two hard disks are inserted in the hard disk cabinet, the serial numbers are the same.

That's the problem. The fix is to "fix that". This could be as simple as using two different brands of USB-to-SATA converters that have different serial numbers.

I guess that zfs may use the serial number

As far as I know, it isn't ZFS but rather TrueNAS. TrueNAS is designed to handle multipathing of hard disks and to support replacement of failed drives in an iXsystems hardware platform. The developers have not considered two disks with the same identifiers to be a bug in TrueNAS, so, even though this could be portrayed as a "problem" that could be fixed in TrueNAS, it would just create different issues to fix it. Us free users are really beta testers for an enterprise software product, and the developers are not intent on solving every problem presented by users with unusual setups.
 
Joined
Dec 27, 2018
Messages
3
This is probably a very bad idea.

1) A laptop/notebook is a poor choice for a NAS, because it is not designed for the sort of use. Most laptops will have a bad ethernet chipset (Realtek etc), low memory, low power CPU, display will always be on, and -- perhaps most importantly for you -- is powered independently of external USB enclosures, so, if you hit a power failure, your drives disappear to your NAS.

2) USB is also hazardous due to the general poor quality of many USB-SATA bridge chip sets, and the potential for cables to be accidentally disconnected.
I know the risks.
The notebook is just a temporary solution. I want to use it to use the extra disks at home first, so the hard disks are all mirrored, and when the budget is enough, a strong NAS will be installed.
That's the problem. The fix is to "fix that". This could be as simple as using two different brands of USB-to-SATA converters that have different serial numbers.
How to fix it? I searched for a software to modify the serial number of the hard disk, but it doesn't look like the encoding format :(
As far as I know, it isn't ZFS but rather TrueNAS. TrueNAS is designed to handle multipathing of hard disks and to support replacement of failed drives in an iXsystems hardware platform. The developers have not considered two disks with the same identifiers to be a bug in TrueNAS, so, even though this could be portrayed as a "problem" that could be fixed in TrueNAS, it would just create different issues to fix it. Us free users are really beta testers for an enterprise software product, and the developers are not intent on solving every problem presented by users with unusual setups.
I can understand and accept this. I tried manually adding two 500G HDs to my data pool as mirror vdevs at the command line:
(command)# zpool add droot mirror da0 da1
It was executed smoothly, but I was particularly worried that it would be unreliable, so I didn't dare to continue, so I deleted two pieces of 500G from the pool...
 

jgreco

Resident Grinch
Joined
May 29, 2011
Messages
18,681
I have no good answers. Sometimes we don't do things because they're just a bad idea... that makes it difficult to find anyone with any practical experience.
 
Top