I moved to another server by swapping the mainboard. As it has less SATA ports and my Port Multiplier isn't delivered by now I tried to connect two drives with USB3.0 to SATA adapters. But after rebooting those two drives are missing:

 

If I understand my diagnostics logs correctly, the server completely does not find these mass storages. There is only one mass storage entry and this is the unraid flash drive. What could be the reason? Or do I need to enable something in the settings to use usb disks as part of the array?

 

EDIT: Sorry, sometimes its needed to read a manual. For 3.5 inch drive I need to use an external power supply 😅

 

 

Edited September 18, 20205 yr by mgutt

You probably already know this, but I wanted to reiterate that this is a very bad idea, and will likely result in dropped disks and possible data loss depending on the scenario. USB connections just aren't stable enough for parity array disks.

Yes, this is only a temporary solution.

 

Only for whom is interested:

The usb adapters return different device ids ("jmicron_..." instead of "hgst_..."), so I needed to create a new array config and assign them in the correct order. Now they are in the correct order, but need a new parity calculation.

Edited September 20, 20205 yr by mgutt

Oh no.. found out that my C246 Motherboard does not support SATA Port Multiplier 😭

 

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/300-series-chipset-pch-datasheet-vol-1.pdf

Quote

 

The PCH SATA controller does not support:

- Port Multiplier

- FIS Based Switching

- Command Based Switching

 

But the performance of the usb connected drives looks good, so no reason not to use USB (except of the little bit higher energy consumption of 2W per drive):

 

Edited October 7, 20205 yr by mgutt