How do I know which physical drive ada1 refers to in FreeNAS?

Dravinian · July 14, 2020

So you have some context.

I have a pool of three identical small drives (2tb), I am going to expand my storage by removing one drive at a time and replacing that drive with a 14tb drive. The pool will resilver itself, and then I will replace the next drive. When all three are replaced it will resilver itself and then go poof into a 28tb pool, instead of a 4tb pool (give or take a few) - at least according to the world wide web and the manual - to a certain extent.

My issue is this, looking at the manual, it has a process for removing a 'failed' drive, which is to right click on it and do 'replace' and then physically replace that drive.

My drives are are all named within FreeNAS: "ada1, ada3, ada5".

So if I click on ada1 and choose replace...how do I know which one of the drives that is in my machine? They are all identical, same brand, size etc. Is there a way to identify the drive somehow? To gather a bit more info, like the serial number of the drive so that I can know which one it is in FreeNAS and know which one I clicked 'replace' on and therefore replace that drive, rather than the wrong one?

Dravinian · July 14, 2020

I am doing a replication task at the moment and finding it a bit difficult to move around within FreeNAS and do anything - so unable to just tinker til I find something which is the usual way I find things out.

If no-one knows (or no-one who sees this post and can be bothered to reply knows the answer) I will have a tinker this evening when the replication process is complete and if I find an answer will post it for anyone doing this in the future.

Jarsky · July 14, 2020

Open up shell and try the below command. It should list details about the disks and I think should have the serial number.

geom disk list

Dravinian · July 14, 2020

43 minutes ago, Jarsky said:
Open up shell and try the below command. It should list details about the disks and I think should have the serial number.
geom disk list

Thank you, not sure any amount of tinkering would have found that. Does appear to give a number of numerical values as an ID, hopefully one will allow me to identify the disk I have 'replaced'

kkpatel87 · July 15, 2020

On 7/14/2020 at 5:44 AM, Dravinian said:

-snip-

To avoid this issue in this issue in the future, i would recommend reading Book 7 in the IT mastery series by Lucas/Jude. There is a very good description in there on how to name drives.