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Hi all, I've been troubleshooting this on and off for over two weeks and am at my wits end.

I'm trying to turn an old laptop into a server with two 4TB hard drives. I've got two SATA to USB adapters (note: the adaptors each have a power plug which goes directly into a wall socket - so both drives are powered from the wall. i.e., they're not relying on USB power). 

No matter what I do, only one of the drives is detected. I've swapped the adapter cables around with each of the drives - each drive and each cable is fully functional. However, only one drive is ever detected in HEXOS or TrueNAS. 

I thought for some reason that the issue might be with the USB processing in the laptop, as the SATA to USB adapters were originally plugged into the standard USB ports in the laptop. So, today I got a type C adapter with two USB ports to put the SATAs into there. That doesn't work either. It also doesn't work if I only use one of the USB ports in the type C adapter, and one directly into the laptop.

I've even tried plugging each HDD power plug into different outlets (and not on a switchboard together), which hasn't worked either.

No matter what, either drive will detect on its own, but never both of them. The drive also doesn't seem to show up in TrueNAS either. Obviously without the second drive I can't even get started setting up a pool or anything else, so it's been quite a demoralising process for my first server. 

Does anyone have any idea what the issue might be and how to fix it?

 

3 answers to this question

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Posted

Hey,

Are both SATA to USB adapters the same model from the same company? If yes, this could be the issue, since most USB devices are not properly providing the serial number of the drive but are using a generic one, which is the same for each model/company, but Hexos/Truenas relies on each drive having a different serial number. That's also the reason why most USB multi drive cases are not working.

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Posted
19 minutes ago, PsychoWards said:

Hey,

Are both SATA to USB adapters the same model from the same company? If yes, this could be the issue, since most USB devices are not properly providing the serial number of the drive but are using a generic one, which is the same for each model/company, but Hexos/Truenas relies on each drive having a different serial number. That's also the reason why most USB multi drive cases are not working.

They are the exact same model from the same company... I'll try order a completely different one from Amazon and check back in with the results. 

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