USB External Drive seen in CLI but not in GUI (Storage-Drives)

[chad-x]

Hello Team,

I have an issue that I am hoping someone can shed some light on for me. I am using a Dell Optiplex 580 PC as a TrueNAS server which also has the Plex plugin installed.
I have 2 x 2Tb Western Digital drives configured in a ZFS RAID which forms one Pool.

I also have 2 x 1 Tb Western Digital drives configured in a mirror in another pool. I have added 2 other 1 Tb drives in another mirror in this same pool. Therefore, there are 4 disks in this pool. I have 2 other drives connected to the server but I am unable to see one of them in the TrueNAS GUI for some reason. When I run the 'camcontrol devlist' command I can see the drive in the list. All drives in the second pool are connected via USB ports at the back of the system.

The drive highlighted in red below is the drive missing in the GUI.

Disk Information
KingDian S100 32GB SBFQ61C3: at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0)
WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0 01.00A01: at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada1)
WDC WD20EADS-00R6B0 01.00A01: at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,ada2)
ST1000DM 010-2EP102: at scbus8 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass3)
WD Ext HDD 1021 2021: at scbus9 target 0 lun 0 (da1,pass4)
TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100M 0: at scbus10 target 0 lun 0 (da2,pass5)
WDC WD10 SPZX-75Z10T2 4101: at scbus11 target 0 lun 0 (da3,pass6)
HDD 0000: at scbus12 target 0 lun 0 (da4,pass7)
ST1000LM 049-2GH172 4101: at scbus13 target 0 lun 0 (da5,pass8)

Has anyone experienced this configuration puzzle before? Is there are a way to mount the drive so that it will be detected in the GUI?

See my system information below:
TrueNAS-12.0-U5.1
Dell Optiplex 580
Memory: 14Gb
CPU:AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 B22 Processor (2800.33-MHz K8-class CPU)
Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Appreciate any help I can get.

Thanks

Chad-X

 

[Heracles]

All drives in the second pool are connected via USB ports at the back of the system.

That is a big No-No : Never use USB drives in a pool. USB interface does not offer the fast and direct physical access to the drives TrueNAS requires. USB adds an abstraction layer that compromises TrueNAS and ZFS assumptions about the drives, leading to corruption.

If indeed these drives has been added to the pool, it may be hard to remove them without destroying the pool. Backup your data ASAP and re-design your entire system according to the TrueNAS's requirements.

In the process, know that the Green series is not recommended for NAS, neither are laptop drives.

 

[chad-x]

That is a big No-No : Never use USB drives in a pool. USB interface does not offer the fast and direct physical access to the drives TrueNAS requires. USB adds an abstraction layer that compromises TrueNAS and ZFS assumptions about the drives, leading to corruption.

If indeed these drives has been added to the pool, it may be hard to remove them without destroying the pool. Backup your data ASAP and re-design your entire system according to the TrueNAS's requirements.

In the process, know that the Green series is not recommended for NAS, neither are laptop drives.

Thanks for the information.

So all drives should be mounted within the chassis, via the motherboard connectors?

 

[Heracles]

So all drives should be mounted within the chassis, via the motherboard connectors?

You can use HBAs and expander as well, so directly to the motherboard is not the only option.

As for external, e-SATA is the same technology as SATA but external. Such a port does not add the same kind of abstraction layer as USB. As such, it is not that bad to use them.

 

[Arwen]

...

As for external, e-SATA is the same technology as SATA but external. Such a port does not add the same kind of abstraction layer as USB. As such, it is not that bad to use them.

With the caveat that some multi-disk eSATA enclosures are configured with SATA port multipliers. SATA port multiplies are also problematic. (@Heracles almost certainly knows this, just clarifying for other readers...)

On the other hand, SAS Expanders work GREAT, (except SAS version 1 expanders, but those are really old by now).

 

[Heracles]

Thanks for the precision @Arwen. Indeed, I was thinking about single drive / single port situations only...

 

[chad-x]

Thanks for clearing that up for me guys. I will use that information going forward.