# USB 3/eSATA multiplexing with mediasonic probox JBODs



## raydawg (Aug 13, 2014)

Hi,

I've recently migrated my file server from OpenIndiana to FreeBSD 10.0, I have a pair of 8 bay Mediasonic ProBox JBODs  (H82-SU3S2) which worked fine under OI over USB 2.0, but they were of course glacially slow.

I wasn't able to get them to work at all over USB 3, plugging them into USB 2 slots did not either.  Is there something I need to set with sysctl to make the mass USB driver work?  As I read in the FreeBSD handbook, I should have seen messages in dmesg or /var/log/messages about USB mass drivers, but nothing showed up when I plug them in or unplug them.  I do see the USB bus rescan and show things like the keyboard and mouse, but nothing about the drives.

I purchased a Marvell 2 port eSATA PCIe HBA, but only the 1st drive out of the 8 shows up, so I take it that controller can't do multiplexing with this JBOD:


```
ahci0: <Marvell 88SE912x AHCI SATA controller> port 0xbf00-0xbf07,0xbe00-0xbe03,0xbd00-0xbd07,0xbc00-0xbc03,0xbb00-0xbb0f mem 0xfb8ff000-0xfb8ff7ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
ahci1: <Marvell 88SE9172 AHCI SATA controller> port 0xdf00-0xdf07,0xde00-0xde03,0xdd00-0xdd07,0xdc00-0xdc03,0xdb00-0xdb0f mem 0xfb9ff000-0xfb9ff1ff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci15
```

I'm considering purchasing this controller: http://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HP1-SS3-External-Express/dp/B009DUREHU/
anyone know whether FreeBSD will support multiplexing with that controller to my JBOD?

I do have a single eSATA port on the motherboard and one of them works through that, but it randomly generates timeouts which eventually block all access to the zpool and cause zpool commands to freeze until the next reboot.

Stuff like this shows up in dmesg:

```
(aprobe4:ahcich15:0:4:0): SOFT_RESET. ACB: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
(aprobe4:ahcich15:0:4:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(aprobe4:ahcich15:0:4:0): Error 5, Retries exhausted
(aprobe5:ahcich15:0:5:0): SOFT_RESET. ACB: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
(aprobe5:ahcich15:0:5:0): CAM status: Command timeout
(aprobe5:ahcich15:0:5:0): Error 5, Retries exhausted
(ada10:ahcich15:0:4:0): Periph destroyed
(ada13:ahcich15:0:7:0): Periph destroyed
```

I also have some internal drives that have similar timeout issues, not sure what could cause this.


----------

