USB problems, at my wits end

[skysurf76]

Several years ago I built a Freenas box and had 3 2tb USB drives attached in a raid-z1 array, I also had another z1 array in sata internal drives in the case. It worked like a champ for years and I never had an ounce of trouble with it. Before Christmas it started hanging and I had to reboot it alot so I decided to rebuild/upgrade it. I checked the drives, and some had to be returned due to failing the manufacturer's own software tests. I also bought a couple news one. Anyway, I ended up buying 5 plugable USB3.0 sata HDD docking bays, and a plugable 7 port powered USB3.0 hub. I set up all the usb drives in a raid-z2 array (I really wanted some heavy redundancy), and everything went fine at first. I wanted all the drives in the USB docking bays to make them easy to get to. I've had enough with swapping drives in the computer case. I didn't want to have to do that anymore.

Then the drive on da3 faulted and all the trouble began. I replaced the drive with a brand new drive. The next day it faulted again with the brand new drive. I tested the drive on another computer and ran a long test on it and it passed. I then replaced the USB3.0 docking station with a new one and resilvered and the next day da3 was again faulted and the array degraded. Finally I replaced the USB3.0 hub assuming the failure must be there. After replacing the hub the next day da3 faulted again.

I am about to give up on this project completely. I have sunk so much time and effort into this that I am completely disgusted. All the other drives other than the one connected to port 3 on the hub (da3) work just fine. Also I've left the whole array faulted for several days and everything continues to work great, but no matter what I put in that da3 spot it always craps out after a day.

I'll entertain pretty much any suggestions at this point.

 

[HoneyBadger]

I'll entertain pretty much any suggestions at this point.

You're using a USB 3.0 hub to connect your zpool drives.

You'll have to excuse my bluntness here, but absolutely none of that was a good idea whatsoever.

You need to get those drives off of USB and onto SATA. Buy a case with hotswap trays if you hate physically opening your system. I can't fathom the mindset of wanting to use RAIDZ2 for "extra redundancy" and then connecting it all via USB, especially a hub, which makes it a single point of failure.

 

[cyberjock]

Wow.... just wow. The choice of USB.. is just... wow. Someone's gonna lose their data... LOL.

 

[joeschmuck]

The suggestion I'd give you is Backup Everything while you can.

I think it was quite ambitious taking on a USB system like that. Unfortunately you discovered a huge shortfall and the fact that FreeNAS was not designed to operate that way even though it can theoretically. The sad part is you spent money on USB 3.0 parts that could have been better spent on a case with removable drives from the front. I have a cage which converts a 3 bay 5.25" area into a 5 bay 3.5" removable drives and support hot swap if you're into that, I personally shut the system down before swapping drives. I don't use it on my FreeNAS, it's on my main computer so it gets more use than I'd ever expect to get on a NAS.

 

[Joshua Henry]

Hello skysurf76,,

This is Josh with Plugable Technologies! I'm sorry to hear about your frustration and would like to see if I can help.

Can you give me some information about the system that you are using? Motherboard, USB 3.0 host controller, version of FreeNAS installed, and your hard drive model(s).

Joshua Henry
Plugable Technologies