# Four drive external hard drive enclosure for FreeBSD



## clpollock (Dec 20, 2012)

I've been thinking that something like the Vantec NexStar HX4 (http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/488) would be a pretty good, cheap backup solution for my photo collection. I would put 4 x 3TB drives in it and create 2 ZFS pools with mirrored disks.

Does anyone know if this enclosure, or something similar, is compatible with FreeBSD? Are there any potential problems that I should be aware of? Any advice would be much appreciated.

For what it's worth, I've been using a couple of Antec MX-1 enclosures on FreeBSD with single disk ZFS pools. They work perfectly if I connect via USB, but eSATA is unreliable.(Although I've found eSATA to be unreliable on Windows too.)


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## SirDice (Dec 20, 2012)

clpollock said:
			
		

> For what it's worth, I've been using a couple of Antec MX-1 enclosures on FreeBSD with single disk ZFS pools. They work perfectly if I connect via USB, but eSATA is unreliable.(Although I've found eSATA to be unreliable on Windows too.)


I have the same issue with an IcyCube, it works fine with USB but eSATA regularly gives me time-outs. Haven't tried it on Windows though.


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## d4nte (Mar 21, 2014)

Hi,

I have never used such USB external hard drive enclosure. Does it show up on the system as separate hard drive or does it usually a chipset which does raid for you?


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## phoenix (Mar 21, 2014)

clpollock said:
			
		

> I've been thinking that something like the Vantec NexStar HX4 (http://www.vantecusa.com/en/product/view_detail/488) would be a pretty good, cheap backup solution for my photo collection. I would put 4 x 3TB drives in it and create 2 ZFS pools with mirrored disks.



Why two separate pools?  Why not a single ZFS pool comprised of 2 mirror vdevs?



> Any advice would be much appreciated.



How is it presented to the OS?  Can you actually see the individual drives for use with ZFS, or are they presented as a single drive?  What is the connection to the host computer?  The user manual is pretty slim on details.  It kind of looks like everything is multiplexed over a single connection (meaning you would be limited to a single 3 Gbps SATA connection to the host), and that all 4 drives are presented to the OS as a single logical device (so you couldn't use ZFS).  But, again, the manual is slim on details so it may show up as 4 separate drives.


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## kpa (Mar 21, 2014)

I would steer clear of any enclosure that doesn't offer you the option to access the drives individually. If the electronics in the enclosure break the only way can recover your data is to get another enclosure of the same make and model.


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## SirDice (Mar 21, 2014)

The IcyCube I have shows all four drives separately on both USB and eSATA. The NexStar HX4 seems to be the same, the specifications say it requires a port multiplier for eSATA. The box itself doesn't seem to provide any kind of RAID either so it's safe to assume all four drives are accessible individually.


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