Portability of drives connected via motherboard SATA to HBA SATA? Complicated by 4Ke and SED?

I’m doing some renovations on my oldest TrueNAS system, requiring moving some drives in and out of the system. As suggested above, I’ve historically been able to move a pool’s drives between SATA ports on the motherboard and an LSI SAS3008 HBA in a PCIe slot.

For some reason, one pool “TANK_SATA” – built on top of newer Seagate 24TB 4Ke SED drives – only works when attached to the motherboard ports. When I try to relocate it to the HBA, the drives show up, but the partitions on the drive don’t, and thus the pool doesn’t load. When I move the pool’s drives back to the motherboard ports, everything works fine again.

In the past, another pool on the system “ZFS_20TB” – built on top of older WD 10TB drives (except for one failure replacement) – moved between motherboard and HBA SATA connections without issue.

Perhaps, complicating the matter is the newer drives on the TANK_SATA pool are set to use 4Ke logical sectors as well as to use SED encryption. I do have TrueNAS configured to unlock the SED drives, which works fine on the motherboard SATA connection – and the settings for which which even still shows up in the TrueNAS drive configuration settings when connected via HBA. However, oddly enough, the newer drives on the HBA don’t even get recognized by sedutil-cli as SED Enterprise drives, like they do when connected to the motherboard.

Should I be able to move the TANK_SATA drives from the motherboard SATA interface to the HBA? (As I have in the past for other drives). Is this as expected? Any troubleshooting ideas?

Here’s some of my system details if it helps call attention to anything significant:

My TrueNAS, running 25.10.3, is actually running virtualized in an ESXi 7 host, running on a SuperMicro X11SCA-F, with a number of PCIe device being passed-through – the main focus here is:

  1. the motherboard SATA (Cannon Lake PCH SATA AHCI Controller)
  2. the HBA (Broadcom / LSI SAS3008 PCI-Express)
root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# lspci |grep -E -i "ata|sas|nvme|graphics"
02:03.0 SATA controller: VMware SATA AHCI controller
05:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Micron Technology Inc 7450 MAX NVMe SSD (rev 01)
0b:00.0 Display controller: Intel Corporation CoffeeLake-S GT2 [UHD Graphics P630]
0c:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: VMware NVMe SSD Controller
13:00.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SATA AHCI Controller (rev 10)
14:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS3008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-3 (rev 02)
1c:00.0 SATA controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1062 Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)

Attached to these controllers, I have two sets of 4 SATA drives, making up two zpools:

  1. ZFS_20TB (an older pool made up largely of older WD 10TB drives)
    and
  2. TANK_SATA (a newer pool made up of Seagate 24TB SED drives, with 4K logical sectors)
root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# lsblk -o NAME,MODEL,SIZE,LABEL,FSROOTS,TRAN,PHY-SEC,LOG-SEC,fstype,fsver
NAME        MODEL                           SIZE LABEL                    FSROOTS TRAN   PHY-SEC LOG-SEC FSTYPE            FSVER
sda         Virtual disk                     16G                                             512     512                   
├─sda1                                      260M EFI                                         512     512 vfat              FAT32
└─sda2                                     15.7G freenas-boot                                512     512 zfs_member        5000
sdb         Virtual disk                     16G                                             512     512                   
├─sdb1                                      260M EFI                                         512     512 vfat              FAT32
└─sdb2                                     15.7G freenas-boot                                512     512 zfs_member        5000
sdc         WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0           9.1T                                  sas       4096     512                   
├─sdc1                                        2G freenas02:swap0                            4096     512 linux_raid_member 1.2
└─sdc2                                      9.1T ZFS_20TB                                   4096     512 zfs_member        5000
sdd         WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0           9.1T                                  sas       4096     512                   
├─sdd1                                        2G freenas02:swap1                            4096     512 linux_raid_member 1.2
└─sdd2                                      9.1T ZFS_20TB                                   4096     512 zfs_member        5000
sde         WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0           9.1T                                  sas       4096     512                   
├─sde1                                        2G freenas02:swap1                            4096     512 linux_raid_member 1.2
└─sde2                                      9.1T ZFS_20TB                                   4096     512 zfs_member        5000
sdf         ST18000NM000J-2TV103           16.4T                                  sas       4096     512                   
├─sdf1                                        2G freenas02:swap0                            4096     512 linux_raid_member 1.2
└─sdf2                                     16.4T ZFS_20TB                                   4096     512 zfs_member        5000
sdg         ST24000NM001H-3KS113           21.8T                                  sata      4096    4096                   
└─sdg1                                     21.8T TANK_SATA                                  4096    4096 zfs_member        5000
sdh         ST24000NM001H-3KS113           21.8T                                  sata      4096    4096                   
└─sdh1                                     21.8T TANK_SATA                                  4096    4096 zfs_member        5000
sdi         ST24000NM001H-3KS113           21.8T                                  sata      4096    4096                   
└─sdi1                                     21.8T TANK_SATA                                  4096    4096 zfs_member        5000
sdj         ST24000NM001H-3KS113           21.8T                                  sata      4096    4096                   
└─sdj1                                     21.8T TANK_SATA                                  4096    4096 zfs_member        5000
sr0         VMware Virtual SATA CDRW Drive  1.9G Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS amd64         sata      2048    2048 iso9660           Joliet Extension
nvme0n1     Micron_7450_MTFDKCC3T2TFS       2.9T                                  nvme      4096    4096                   
└─nvme0n1p1                                 2.9T TANK_NVME                        nvme      4096    4096 zfs_member        5000

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# zpool status ZFS_20TB
  pool: ZFS_20TB
 state: ONLINE
status: Some supported and requested features are not enabled on the pool.
        The pool can still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Enable all features using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done,
        the pool may no longer be accessible by software that does not support
        the features. See zpool-features(7) for details.
  scan: scrub repaired 0B in 20:07:22 with 0 errors on Sun Apr 12 20:07:24 2026
config:

        NAME                                          STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        ZFS_20TB                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-0                                    ONLINE       0     0     0
            ata-WDC_WD100EFAX-68LHPN0_7JH34DSC-part2  ONLINE       0     0     0
            sdf2                                      ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-1                                    ONLINE       0     0     0
            ata-WDC_WD100EFAX-68LHPN0_7JH6YWGC-part2  ONLINE       0     0     0
            ata-WDC_WD100EFAX-68LHPN0_7JHB9RWC-part2  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# zpool status TANK_SATA
  pool: TANK_SATA
 state: ONLINE
status: Some supported and requested features are not enabled on the pool.
        The pool can still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Enable all features using 'zpool upgrade'. Once this is done,
        the pool may no longer be accessible by software that does not support
        the features. See zpool-features(7) for details.
  scan: scrub repaired 1M in 08:23:39 with 0 errors on Thu Apr 16 02:40:46 2026
config:

        NAME                                      STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        TANK_SATA                                 ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-0                                ONLINE       0     0     0
            c4ec3173-5bdc-4992-b299-566a994f7756  ONLINE       0     0     0
            068f10fd-6e65-44ab-9206-f8bfc62f7599  ONLINE       0     0     0
          mirror-1                                ONLINE       0     0     0
            9bbd6841-dab3-45da-8d73-fbb6f6a20c6d  ONLINE       0     0     0
            0daa796e-9040-4bab-9608-225beed63b70  ONLINE       0     0     0

errors: No known data errors

My HBA is running recent firmware:

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# sas3flash -list
Avago Technologies SAS3 Flash Utility
Version 16.00.00.00 (2017.05.02) 
Copyright 2008-2017 Avago Technologies. All rights reserved.

        Adapter Selected is a Avago SAS: SAS3008(C0)

        Controller Number              : 0
        Controller                     : SAS3008(C0)
        PCI Address                    : 00:14:00:00
        SAS Address                    : 500605b-0-0c22-e330
        NVDATA Version (Default)       : 0e.01.00.08
        NVDATA Version (Persistent)    : 0e.01.00.08
        Firmware Product ID            : 0x2221 (IT)
        Firmware Version               : 16.00.10.00
        NVDATA Vendor                  : LSI
        NVDATA Product ID              : SAS9300-8e
        BIOS Version                   : 08.37.00.00
        UEFI BSD Version               : 10.00.00.00
        FCODE Version                  : N/A
        Board Name                     : SAS9300-8e
        Board Assembly                 : 03-25718-00B
        Board Tracer Number            : SP63314371

        Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
        Exiting SAS3Flash.

When connected via the motherboard SATA, the 24TB drives are recognized as SED:

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# sedutil-cli --scan
Scanning for Opal compliant disks
/dev/nvme0  2      Micron_7450_MTFDKCC3T2TFS                E2MU200 
NVME Security Command Error:1
/dev/nvme1 No      VMware Virtual NVMe Disk 1.0
/dev/sda   No      Virtual disk     2.0 
/dev/sdb   No      Virtual disk     2.0 
/dev/sdc   No       
/dev/sdd   No       
/dev/sde   No       
/dev/sdf   No       
/dev/sdg     E     ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdh     E     ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdi     E     ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdj     E     ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
No more disks present ending scan

When connected via the HBA, the 24TB drives are NOT recognized as SED – so I can’t even try to manually unlock, in case auto unlock isn’t working:

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# sedutil-cli --scan
Scanning for Opal compliant disks
/dev/nvme0  2      Micron_7450_MTFDKCC3T2TFS                E2MU200 
NVME Security Command Error:1
/dev/nvme1 No      VMware Virtual NVMe Disk 1.0
/dev/sda   No      Virtual disk     2.0 
/dev/sdb   No      Virtual disk     2.0 
/dev/sdc   No      ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdd   No      ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sde   No      ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdf   No      ST24000NM001H-3KS113                     SS07    
/dev/sdg   No       
/dev/sdh   No       
/dev/sdi   No       
/dev/sdj   No       

No more disks present ending scan

And likewise, or perhaps consequently, the partitions didn’t show:

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# lsblk -o NAME,VENDOR,MODEL,SERIAL,UUID,FSTYPE,WWN,TRAN 

NAME        VENDOR   MODEL                          SERIAL                           UUID                                 FSTYPE            WWN                                  TRAN

sda         VMware   Virtual disk                   6000c29670c855c11671914611423854                                                        0x6000c29670c855c11671914611423854   

├─sda1                                                                               44B7-30B3                            vfat              0x6000c29670c855c11671914611423854   

└─sda2                                                                               7890944875863301110                  zfs_member        0x6000c29670c855c11671914611423854   

sdb         VMware   Virtual disk                   6000c29b52d6202c11eb5765e97c3844                                                        0x6000c29b52d6202c11eb5765e97c3844   

├─sdb1                                                                               44BB-3A10                            vfat              0x6000c29b52d6202c11eb5765e97c3844   

└─sdb2                                                                               7890944875863301110                  zfs_member        0x6000c29b52d6202c11eb5765e97c3844   

sdc         ATA      ST24000NM001H-3KS113           ZYD185XX                                                                                0x5000c500e94ad15e                   sas

sdd         ATA      ST24000NM001H-3KS113           ZYD1QC54                                                                                0x5000c500e95ba470                   sas

sde         ATA      ST24000NM001H-3KS113           ZYD1PS61                                                                                0x5000c500e958b4ec                   sas

sdf         ATA      ST24000NM001H-3KS113           ZYD0PEL2                                                                                0x5000c500e91c8955                   sas

sdg         ATA      WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0          7JHB9RWC                                                                                0x5000cca266d33c24                   sas

├─sdg1                                                                               f44780d9-4aea-e6c4-47ff-c51dcf538340 linux_raid_member 0x5000cca266d33c24                   

└─sdg2                                                                               16900213071200577067                 zfs_member        0x5000cca266d33c24                   

sdh         ATA      WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0          7JH6YWGC                                                                                0x5000cca266d141eb                   sas

├─sdh1                                                                               083482a1-5110-f5bf-3389-007cb9ef0387 linux_raid_member 0x5000cca266d141eb                   

└─sdh2                                                                               16900213071200577067                 zfs_member        0x5000cca266d141eb                   

sdi         ATA      WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0          7JH34DSC                                                                                0x5000cca266cf852d                   sas

├─sdi1                                                                               083482a1-5110-f5bf-3389-007cb9ef0387 linux_raid_member 0x5000cca266cf852d                   

└─sdi2                                                                               16900213071200577067                 zfs_member        0x5000cca266cf852d                   

sdj         ATA      ST18000NM000J-2TV103           ZR52VKZ8                                                                                0x5000c500dbe50412                   sas

├─sdj1                                                                               f44780d9-4aea-e6c4-47ff-c51dcf538340 linux_raid_member 0x5000c500dbe50412                   

└─sdj2                                                                               16900213071200577067                 zfs_member        0x5000c500dbe50412                   

sr0         NECVMWar VMware Virtual SATA CDRW Drive 00000000000000000001             2019-08-05-19-29-01-00               iso9660                                                sata

nvme0n1              Micron_7450_MTFDKCC3T2TFS      22353CF2C223                                                                            eui.000000000000000100a075223cf2c223 nvme

└─nvme0n1p1   

The drives also are running current firmware, and here’s full details of one of them:

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# /root/SeaChestUtilities/SeaChestUtilities/SeaChestUtilities/Linux/Non-RAID/x86_64/SeaChest_Info --scan                          
==========================================================================================
 SeaChest_Info - Seagate drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
 Copyright (c) 2014-2024 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
 SeaChest_Info Version: 2.7.0-8_0_1 X86_64
 Build Date: Sep 26 2024
 Today: 20260424T143439 User: root
==========================================================================================
nvme_ioctl_id: Not a tty
Vendor   Handle       Model Number            Serial Number          FwRev     
VMware   /dev/sg0     Virtual disk            6000c29670c855c11671   2.0       
VMware   /dev/sg1     Virtual disk            6000c29b52d6202c11eb   2.0       
ATA      /dev/sg2     WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0   7JHB9RWC               83.H0A83  
ATA      /dev/sg3     WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0   7JH6YWGC               83.H0A83  
ATA      /dev/sg4     WDC WD100EFAX-68LHPN0   7JH34DSC               83.H0A83  
ATA      /dev/sg5     ST18000NM000J-2TV103    ZR52VKZ8               SN06      
AHCI     /dev/sg6     SGPIO Enclosure                                2.00      
NECVMWar /dev/sg7     VMware SATA CD00                               1.00      
ATA      /dev/sg8     ST24000NM001H-3KS113    ZYD0PEL2               SS07      
ATA      /dev/sg9     ST24000NM001H-3KS113    ZYD185XX               SS07      
ATA      /dev/sg10    ST24000NM001H-3KS113    ZYD1QC54               SS07      
ATA      /dev/sg11    ST24000NM001H-3KS113    ZYD1PS61               SS07      
                                                                               
NVMe     /dev/nvme0n1 Micron_7450_MTFDKCC3T2TFS 22353CF2C223           E2MU200   

root@truenas02[/mnt/TANK_NVME/ek/APPS/Docker]# /root/SeaChestUtilities/SeaChestUtilities/SeaChestUtilities/Linux/Non-RAID/x86_64/SeaChest_Info -i --device /dev/sg8 |grep -v Serial
==========================================================================================
 SeaChest_Info - Seagate drive utilities - NVMe Enabled
 Copyright (c) 2014-2024 Seagate Technology LLC and/or its Affiliates, All Rights Reserved
 SeaChest_Info Version: 2.7.0-8_0_1 X86_64
 Build Date: Sep 26 2024
 Today: 20260424T143443 User: root
==========================================================================================

/dev/sg8 - ST24000NM001H-3KS113 - ZYD0PEL2 - SS07 - ATA
        Model Number: ST24000NM001H-3KS113
        Firmware Revision: SS07
        World Wide Name: 5000C500E91C8955
        Date Of Manufacture: Week 41, 2024
        Drive Capacity (TB/TiB): 24.00/21.83
        Native Drive Capacity (TB/TiB): 24.00/21.83
        Temperature Data:
                Current Temperature (C): 40
                Highest Temperature (C): 52
                Lowest Temperature (C): 28
        Power On Time:  1 year 129 days 20 hours 
        Power On Hours: 11876.00
        MaxLBA: 5859442687
        Native MaxLBA: 5859442687
        Logical Sector Size (B): 4096
        Physical Sector Size (B): 4096
        Sector Alignment: 0
        Rotation Rate (RPM): 7200
        Form Factor: 3.5"
        Last DST information:
                Time since last DST (hours): 214.00
                DST Status/Result: 0x0
                DST Test run: 0x1
        Long Drive Self Test Time:  1 day 8 hours 33 minutes 
        Interface speed:
                Max Speed (Gb/s): 6.0
                Negotiated Speed (Gb/s): 6.0
        Annualized Workload Rate (TB/yr): 22.38
        Total Bytes Read (TB): 21.02
        Total Bytes Written (TB): 9.32
        Encryption Support: Full Disk Encryption
        Cache Size (MiB): 512.00
        Read Look-Ahead: Enabled
        Write Cache: Enabled
        Low Current Spinup: Disabled
        SMART Status: Good
        ATA Security Information: Not Supported
        Firmware Download Support: Full, Segmented, Deferred
        Specifications Supported:
                ACS-5
                ACS-4
                ACS-3
                ACS-2
                ATA8-ACS
                ATA/ATAPI-7
                ATA/ATAPI-6
                ATA/ATAPI-5
                SATA 3.3
                SATA 3.2
                SATA 3.1
                SATA 3.0
                SATA 2.6
                SATA 2.5
                SATA II: Extensions
                SATA 1.0a
                ATA8-AST
        Features Supported:
                Read/Write Multiple
                Sanitize
                SATA NCQ [QD=32]
                SATA Software Settings Preservation [Enabled]
                SATA Device Initiated Power Management
                Power Management
                SMART [Enabled]
                48bit Address
                Set Max Security Extension
                PUIS
                GPL
                Streaming
                SMART Self-Test
                SMART Error Logging
                DSN
                AMAC
                EPC [Enabled]
                Sense Data Reporting [Enabled]
                Write-Read-Verify
                SCT Write Same
                SCT Error Recovery Control
                SCT Feature Control
                SCT Data Tables
                Host Logging
                Set Sector Configuration
                Storage Element Depopulation + Restore
                Field Accessible Reliability Metrics (FARM)
                Seagate In Drive Diagnostics (IDD)
        Adapter Information:
                Adapter Type: PCI
                Vendor ID: 8086h
                Product ID: A352h
                Revision: 0010h

I am afraid I don’t know. I don’t use 4Ke or SED