I'm attempting to use an NVME SSD in an external USB enclosure as an additional cache drive, but despite the device showing up in the unassigned devices plugin, the drive is not recognized, not mountable, and isn't an option to add to a pool. In the device attributes, the flag is "Unable to detect device type".

 

The drive is an XPG SX8200 2TB NVME drive. The enclosure is an ADATA EC700G.

 

Any ideas on how to identify if this is an enclosure issue, a drive issue, or I have something misconfigured? Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

 

Here is the log when the device is connected:

• May 27 09:04:43 Tower kernel: usb 1-2.3: new high-speed USB device number 8 using xhci_hcd
  May 27 09:04:43 Tower kernel: usb-storage 1-2.3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
  May 27 09:04:43 Tower kernel: scsi host2: usb-storage 1-2.3:1.0
  May 27 09:04:43 Tower usb_manager: Info: rc.usb_manager usb_add ADATA_EC700G_123456126490 /dev/bus/usb/001/008 001 008
  May 27 09:04:43 Tower usb_manager: Info: rc.usb_manager Autoconnect No Mapping found ADATA_EC700G_123456126490 /dev/bus/usb/001/008 001 008 port 1-2.3
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ADATA    EC700G           1.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Read Capacity(10) failed: Result: hostbyte=0x00 driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Sense Key : 0x5 [current]
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] ASC=0x24 ASCQ=0x0
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 0 512-byte logical blocks: (0 B/0 B)
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 0-byte physical blocks
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 37 00 00 08
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
  May 27 09:04:44 Tower kernel: sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk
  May 27 09:04:46 Tower emhttpd: device /dev/sdc has size zero

 

Things I've tried:

• Updating the enclosure's firmware. After the firmware update, I was able to get the device to clear and format and had it added as an additional cache pool, but the use of the drive as a cache led to read errors on my array. After removing from the pool, the device is back to being unmountable / unrecognized.
• Connecting to another computer - my Windows PC registered the device to update the firmware without issue.

• blkid does not list the device

• fdisk -l /dev/sdc returns "fdisk: cannot open /dev/sdc: No such file or directory"

• This thread seems to suggest that there may be a hardware fault.

  • If this is the case and reflashing the firmware gets the drive to function again, I assume I'm going to run into the same read errors on the array when using this drive for cache. Am I right that this points to an enclosure issue and I may be able to get this drive working with another enclosure?

Looks more like an enclosure issue to me, but ideally you would try it in an M.2 slot to confirm, in that server or another PC.

Turns out it was a hard drive failure. Replacement hard drive works without issue.