ZFS Unable to mount NVMe SSD connected via USB to FreeBSD (geli encrypted ZFS)

[Kyle77]

Hi, my ordeal continues.

I was trying to install FreeBSD 14 bare metal but had a host of issues with that that didn't work, so I installed 13.3 to Virtual Box in Linux and passed over a hardware usb dongle with an NVMe U.2 drive connected that I want some data off of it. (Backups were only partial...). I got FreeBSD installed to the virtual disk, I ran geli attach /dev/da4 because gpart showed that to be freebsd-zfs (403G). I then tried zpool import -af and got a lot of errors.

Errors were as follows:
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM status: CCB request completed with an error
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): READ(10). CDB: 28 00 00 00 00 48 00 00 e0 00

it then repletes 5 times and says Error 5, Retries exhausted

Theses disks set untouched for about 3 years in storage and the original FreeBSD 12.2 system isn't intact anymore.

Any help on recovering this data would be most helpful!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mirror176]

I'm no expert in this area but in case no one else more CAM familiar has something to say...CAM errors normally means there is trouble with the OS and disk communicating. I thought SSDs are not recommended for long term powered off storage of data without getting occasionally powered up.

In the current state it would likely fail too but if you can successfully `dd` read the disk to a file then you could write that to a disk or file to attempt to get data directly from the copy. You could try installing sysutils/smartmontools and see if `smartctl -x /dev/da0` returns anything interesting in the properties or logs and you can likely use it to run an extended SMART test on the drive to have the drive check itself for issues which would only use CAM communication to initiate the test and to read logs of its results later.

For physical/electrical checks, I'd make sure the drive and adapter circuitry is physically clean (dust/dirt) with no visible damage or signs of high physical stress, that the drive and cable connections looks good and clean it with isopropyl alcohol or a few more removal/reinsert steps if the connector does a friction slide in/out. Try a different USB cable if one is in use, different USB port, and if possible try to bypass such an adapter completely. Reviewing BIOS USB options may be helpful if it is a different system than before. If it is a USB3 port and drive, you can normally get it to treat it as USB2 by plugging it in very slowly (several seconds) or stop plugging it in shortly after it initially starts to connect.

Unrelated (or at least you didn't get this far yet), FreeBSD 13.3 has an issue with arc_prune slowing down activity for a number of users; go to 13.2 or 14 to avoid having to apply patches or other workaround efforts or you can get a lot of CPU time spent on arc_prune. FreeBSD 13 has migrated to OpenZFS based on ZFS on Linux instead of the Illumos code base as used previously. You can consider installing FreeBSD 12.2 or the latest version of 12.