Can't see USB3 disks in FreeNAS 11 with ESXi 6.5

[velkrosmaak]

I know, I know. It's insane using USB disks in a RAIDZ setup. It's just for testing, I promise.

So i'm running ESXi 6.5, with a FreeNAS 11 VM with 6 USB2/3 disks connected. The VM OS is set to 'FreeBSD 64 bit' as per the freenas docs. I try to add a USB2 and USB3 interface, and ESXi moans that the OS doesn't support USB3. Googling seems to suggest that FreeNAS _DOES_ support USB3.

The issue is, I can't see any of those disks under Storage > View Disks.

I can see errors along the lines of USB_SHORT_XFER at boot, which made me suspect this is a USB issue. Do I just need to tell ESXi to pretend it's a different OS so I can use USB3 properly?

Do I just take the disks out of their USB enclosures and get another SATA interface? Should I just get a Zip drive? (hah)

Any help is really appreciated! Moving to FreeNAS from Windows Server Storage Spaces, with which this was weirdly simpler.

 

[kdragon75]

Do I just need to tell ESXi to pretend it's a different OS so I can use USB3 properly?

That's not how ESXi works with USB emulation.
As for getting the disks into FreeNAS, you need to use your SATA or SAS in passthrough mode. Or if your just "testing" FreeNAS, you can just add a few virtual disks. I can't help with running FreeNAS on ESXi with USB disks.