Drive device connection question

[rwslippey]

So I just migrated my old box to a new case. I made some config changes so I offloaded all of my data and moved everything back over.

The case is nice, spacious but I'm not wishing I had gotten the hotswap version.

My question is, this case has drive cages with 5 drives per cage. If I ever needed to pull the entire cage out to replace a drive (disconnecting all of the drives in the process) would is destroy the pool if the drives were not connected back to the exact same ports on the Mb or HBA?

thanks

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

No, that is one of the cool things about FreeNAS/ZFS. It reads the ID written to the disk and just figures it out from there.

 

[rwslippey]

No, that is one of the cool things about FreeNAS/ZFS. It reads the ID written to the disk and just figures it out from there.

Awesome that'll make the next replacement much easier and less prone to my latest issue.

Rebooted after replacing the drive and missing another drive... I'm now freaking out of course... thankfully I must have knocked another sata cable out with my big hands in the thing so just need to reconnect that drive.

Thanks!

 

[Elliot Dierksen]

Rebooted after replcaing the drive and missing another drive... I'm now freaking out of course... thankfully I must of knocked another sata cable out with my big hands in the thing so just need to reconnect that drive.

Yes, I have been there! It is a silly superstition, but I refuse to put the cover back on anything until it has finished at least a POST and looks happy. Things are even more susceptible to bad karma if you put it back in the rack before testing.

 

[rwslippey]

Yes, I have been there! It is a silly superstition, but I refuse to put the cover back on anything until it has finished at least a POST and looks happy. Things are even more susceptible to bad karma if you put it back in the rack before testing. :)

yep.... I said that as soon as I saw the missing drive.... why did I put the cover back on!!!

 

[Chris Moore]

Probably a good idea to do something like this:

If you mark the visible portion of the drive with the last four digits of the drive serial number, it makes it much easier to find the drive you are trying to replace.

 

[rwslippey]

Probably a good idea to do something like this:
View attachment 24756
If you mark the visible portion of the drive with the last four digits of the drive serial number, it makes it much easier to find the drive you are trying to replace.

That's a great idea actually, unfortunately I don't think it would work well in my case. The way the drives sit in the case and in the drive cages doesn't really leave any of the drive exposed or a place to put a label on them.


If it helps to explain a bit better, I have a server chassis with 3 drive cages that slide into the front of the case. Each cage holds 5 drives horizontally stacked. They push all the way in and the cage completely surrounds the drives as a stack. Unfortunately, they're removed from the back of the drive cage (big fan on the front of each cage)

So far I love the case, spacious and very quiet for its size, but the cage can be a pain.

thanks for the idea!

 

[Chris Moore]

So far I love the case, spacious and very quiet for its size, but the cage can be a pain.

Sounds like the Rosewill RSV-L4500 - 4U
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811147164
I prefer the hot-swap drive bays myself.

 

[rwslippey]

Sounds like the Rosewill RSV-L4500 - 4U
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811147164
I prefer the hot-swap drive bays myself.

Yup, that's it... like I said I like it, especially for the price but I should have gone with the hotswap bays....At the time I was thinking I could just deal with the bays in this one and put that extra $ to hardware that would make a difference... hindsight you know

 

[Chris Moore]

Yup, that's it... like I said I like it, especially for the price but I should have gone with the hotswap bays....At the time I was thinking I could just deal with the bays in this one and put that extra $ to hardware that would make a difference... hindsight you know

I did that with my 5th build, my first one where I didn't just re-purpose an existing PC, and I lived with it for over a year. In my situation, I had made the mistake of also buying used hard drives from eBay and I had a lot of drive failures to deal with. I don't think it was more than a month that year without a drive failure and I had tucked my server away in a corner so I had to dig it out and dissemble it just to change a drive. It was a terrible pain. I got my income tax check the next year and I started shopping for a hot-swap solution.
After doing a lot of shopping around, I picked up a chassis similar to this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...lane-Rails-16x-3-5-Drive-Caddies/392079996915
I was able to get two of them for $150 each though. It has been really nice having the hot-swap drive bays and I even like having the redundant power supplies.
I moved to bigger (more drives) chassis later though. My main server now has 48 drive bays.