SOLVED FreeNAS only seeing 1 HDD on a 4 HDD external USB3 case

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I have two SilverStone TS431U USB3/eSATA cases, each holding 4 drives, and when connected via USB3 to my FreeNAS box [via a VantecPCIe UGT-PCE430-4C USB3 PCIe card], only 1 drive per case is recognized and listed in /dev and Storage -> View Disks. I've tried all 4 USB3 ports on the PCIe card with the same results on each one.

• I also booted PartedMagic and Ubuntu from a LiveUSB on my FreeNAS box to verify if this was a hardware issue, however both detected all drives in the external cases without issue.
  • There's no way to verify if this issue would also occur via eSATA, as eSATA requires a port multiplier for all 4 drives to be recognized

I do have the xhci_load tunable active (a holdover from 9.3), and there are several tunables that were set by the system, via autotune, at some point after upgrading to 9.10, or by one of the 9.10 updates [see attached screenshot].

• I've tried with xhci_load enabled and disabled, with no difference either way in regards to this specific issue.

Additionally, if I connect it to the active USB2 port on the rear of the C2750D4I [only 1 is active, with the other 2 active at the header], all disks are detected, which seems to indicate this is USB3 related.

 

[Jailer]

This is such a bad idea I can't even begin to summarize it. Connecting a USB mass storage device with several drives in it is a recipe for failure.

You've been around the forums long enough I can't believe that you haven't seen a couple of failures already of members trying to do this exact same thing.

 

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Each is meant to be an onsite backup of the FreeNAS box only, and will be detached upon each backup finalizing. Since my volumes on my FreeNAS box are not Z2's [they're all Z1's], I figured it was better to be extra safe and keep 2 separate external backups.

Is there a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

 

[Jailer]

If you are just doing a file level backup then attach them to a windows box that properly recognizes them and set up a sync operation.

 

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Awesome, thanks! =]

 

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In case anyone else runs into issues getting a USB3 PCIe card to recognize a multi HDD external casing, perform the following:

• If utilizing FreeNAS 9.10 backwards, tunable xhci_load YES loader must be set

1. Edit /etc/devfs.rules
   • Add: add path 'da*' mode 660 group uucp
2. Issue command: usbconfig
   • Locate the ugen number for the external casing, such as ugen0.2
3. Issue command: usbconfig -u 0 -a 2 reset
   • The HDDs should now be visible under /dev, as well as in BIOS/UEFI upon reboot
4. Issue command to verify: camcontrol devlist