External USB 3.2 toshiba HDD recognized only as USB 2.0

Hi all,

I’m running into an annoying problem with Scale and an external USB 3.2 HDD where I just want to copy some of my large files that I have on TrueNAS Scale in a zfs pool.

I know that USB drives are frowned upon but for this particular use case I need TrueNAS to recognize the drive as USB 3.2 instead of old and slow 2.0 just to copy over some huge files.

When I insert the drive to my workstation running ubuntu 24.04 I can see in dmesg that it is recognized properly as USB 3.2:

[ 4197.438000] usb 2-3: new SuperSpeed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[ 4197.456098] usb 2-3: New USB device found, idVendor=0480, idProduct=b300, bcdDevice= 3.22
[ 4197.456109] usb 2-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 4197.456116] usb 2-3: Product: EXTERNAL_USB
[ 4197.456121] usb 2-3: Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
[ 4197.456127] usb 2-3: SerialNumber: 20241003001302
[ 4197.473705] usb-storage 2-3:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 4197.474119] scsi host9: usb-storage 2-3:1.0
[ 4207.688925] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  EXTERNAL_USB     5438 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[ 4207.689552] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 4207.695300] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[ 4207.960619] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] 7814037164 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00 TB/3.64 TiB)
[ 4207.960630] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] 4096-byte physical blocks
[ 4207.960972] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
[ 4207.960979] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[ 4207.961333] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 4207.997241]  sdc: sdc1
[ 4207.997483] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI disk
[ 4210.826973] EXT4-fs (sdc1): recovery complete
[ 4210.829426] EXT4-fs (sdc1): mounted filesystem c45acba6-394d-4328-aca7-ed2c16feef19 r/w with ordered data mode. Quota mode: none.

but when I plug it into my TrueNAS USB 3.2 port it seems to only support USB 2 which is a deal breaker for my current need of transferring large files (TB):

[23534194.037370] usb 2-1: new SuperSpeed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
[23534194.059420] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0480, idProduct=b300, bcdDevice= 3.22
[23534194.059431] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[23534194.059435] usb 2-1: Product: EXTERNAL_USB
[23534194.059437] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: TOSHIBA
[23534194.059440] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 20241003001302
[23534194.060875] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[23534194.061020] scsi host4: usb-storage 2-1:1.0
[23534200.796026] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access     TOSHIBA  EXTERNAL_USB     5438 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[23534200.796309] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg4 type 0
[23534200.797728] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[23534200.797909] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] 7814037164 512-byte logical blocks: (4.00 TB/3.64 TiB)
[23534200.797914] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] 4096-byte physical blocks
[23534200.798231] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
[23534200.798235] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[23534200.798553] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[23534200.937798]  sde: sde1
[23534200.937997] sd 4:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI disk
[23534345.794651] EXT4-fs (sde1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Quota mode: none.

The hardware where I’m running TrueNAS does have support for USB 3.2 (1x Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps)) so I don’t think it’s a hardware issue, but rather TrueNAS Scale missing some USB 3 components?

Any ideas on how to debug this and get proper USB speeds for this one time transfer of huge files?

The first line of the second log says

What does lsusb -t say?

As of TrueNAS SCALE version 24.10.1, the lsusb tool is not included. It was requested by Feature Request here;

Anyone that has not voted for that feature, and wants it, should do so now.

3 Likes

ok, then boot a standard Linux Distro like Knoppix from USB (a different port) and check then. This will give you an idea if it is a hardware problem or a TrueNAS issue.

http://knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html