so I installed Ubuntu on a VirtualBox VM on my Mac. Dug out my old IDE/SATA - USB2 adapter, pulled the 3 data drives from the server and plugged one in. Worked great on the first disk (1.5 TB Seagate SATA drive). The other two disks don't show up in Linux when I follow the same process. Both are 3 TB Seagate drives.
Is it maybe related to the drive size? maybe my adapter doesn't work with the larger drives or something? the adapter is a Vance CB-ISATAU2 - claims that it supports "LBA-48 Addressing"
The drive spins up and I can see it in Disk Utility on the Mac (no volumes, just the device). When I select the adapter in VirtualBox to connect it to the VM, the device disappears from Disk Utility but does not show up in Ubuntu. When I do the same thing with the 1.5 TB disk it shows up fine with no additional steps required.