Cannot See New eSATA Disk

[El_Man]

Hello, FreeNASers.

I physically attached a new eSATA external disk - for some rsync backups - to a client's FreeNAS machine, but nothing new has shown up on the View Disks page. Similarly, 'camcontrol devlist' does not display anything new.

What am I missing? There's nothing obvious in the doco, and I'm not a FreeBSD guru.

This is the first disk of 3 or 4, to be used for rotating backups, but I'd like to get it working before buying any more. It is a Welland eSATA case, and inside is a WD 4Tb Green.

And a nod towards where I could find a suitable script for an rsync backup to a removable disk would be appreciated, too. :)

 

[mjws00]

I would guess that the controller is missing a driver. Or there is a port multiplier or something not playing nice.
List exact hardware, and someone will likely spot it.

 

[El_Man]

Was beginning to suspect the hardware. The external eSATA port is on a PCI card in the machine, and it should be active, as two of the disks in the zpool are plugged into its internal SATA ports.

Yeah, I know, it's weird and maybe not a good idea. I didn't build this box, the client's previous IT provider did. Nor do I have any idea of what said PCI card is, I'll have to pull some things apart to find out, and that's not likely to happen before the new year.

 

[Ericloewe]

Is the eSATA cable longer than 1m? If so, get a shorter one.

 

[El_Man]

It's the standard one that came with the Welland disk case. Might not be the best quality, but pretty sure it's not longer than 1m. Will check that too.

 

[mjws00]

The add in card will have a cheapo Marvell controller that runs a no driver multiplier on the external port or something. Not unreasonable that internal ports could still run. But without knowing the actual gear it's only a guess. Don't know anything about the external case either so that's another crap shoot.

 

[El_Man]

I'm starting to dislike this hardware. Until I can shift this FreeNAS onto server hardware (for the current hardware, see here ), it looks like I'll have to attach the external disk to a PC and backup the data over the network using a robocopy script, and forget rsync for now.

Well, a project for 2015, then.

 

[JoeVulture]

Hello, FreeNASers.
And a nod towards where I could find a suitable script for an rsync backup to a removable disk would be appreciated, too. :)

I can help with the script - I just put something up today on my website with the details of how I do my backups using rsync.

Give this a shot.

 

[El_Man]

Thanks, Joe. I'll have a good look at your script. It sounds ideal. :)