Seeking advice during drive upgrade process (USB dock usable?)

[file_haver]

Hi everyone,

First of all i've read the section of the manual / wiki regarding best practices for upgrading your drives to larger capacity, no problems there :)

Here's my predicament; I currently would like to upgrade my NAS hardware but need to transplant my build into a different case to store more hard drives and add some SATA cards. My motherboard only has 4 SATA slots, all of which are in use. (SATA0 = boot SSD, SATA 1+3 = ZFS RAID1, SATA 2 = ZFS volume 2)

I have one more space i can mount a drive but no more SATA ports. In order to not take the single drive offline, could I use a USB hard drive dock?

I noticed the guide mentioned eSATA or adding a SATA card, but I only have USB 3 hard drive enclosures without eSATA here. However, the machine has an eSATA connector on the motherboard, so if it's the only way aside from adding a SATA card I could borrow a drive enclosure with eSATA from a friend.

I just didn't want to invest in the SATA card to do this since i plan on upgrading the entire machine I run freeNAS on in the next couple months. When I do this i plan to go to a server motherboard with more onboard SATA. (It is currently in a prebuilt PC with inadequate airflow and number of drive mounts. If i can find a case with enough drive mounts that I can mount a BTX motherboard in i would do that, but that's a different topic altogether.)

 

[garm]

I was in the same situation building my present setup, prebuilt server with only 4 SATA connectors on the MB. What I did was to buy an LSI9211-8i flashed to IT (HBA) mode and SATA breakout cables. When the day comes to upgrade from the 6 drives I use today I’ll get a SAS expander. Don’t get a SATA card..

When it comes to USB docks they are useless unless they convey S.M.A.R.T data, I have yet to see one do. The connection is also a bit flaky, stay away from USB. Burn-in should be done on a different machine or on you FreeNAS with the data drives disconnected. In any case you don’t need additional space for that. Resilvering is nicer with all drives in play, the HBA card would let you do that with the drives you have, past 8 drives you need the expander card. I use eSATA for attaching external drives to the NAS, for all other tasks I connect to the HBA.

 

[file_haver]

I was in the same situation building my present setup, prebuilt server with only 4 SATA connectors on the MB. What I did was to buy an LSI9211-8i flashed to IT (HBA) mode and SATA breakout cables. When the day comes to upgrade from the 6 drives I use today I’ll get a SAS expander. Don’t get a SATA card..

When it comes to USB docks they are useless unless they convey S.M.A.R.T data, I have yet to see one do. The connection is also a bit flaky, stay away from USB. Burn-in should be done on a different machine or on you FreeNAS with the data drives disconnected. In any case you don’t need additional space for that. Resilvering is nicer with all drives in play, the HBA card would let you do that with the drives you have, past 8 drives you need the expander card. I use eSATA for attaching external drives to the NAS, for all other tasks I connect to the HBA.

Thanks garm! That sounds like great advice and even better that you used to be in the same predicament as me.
I'll do what you did and look for a LSI9211. I don't think anyone i know has an eSATA enclosure still. If i have to spend some money then the LSI9211 seems like it could be useful for future freeNAS builds anyway.

Thanks again!