External USB drive kernel problems

[Christopher Sean Hilton]

On Tue, 2006-11-21 at 12:38 -0500, up at 3.am wrote:
> (Please reply directly to me, as I am not subscribed)
> 
> I just bought a VIA external USB enclosure with a Hitachi 200GB ATA drive
> to use for disk-based backups.  I put it on my test box here, which I just
> upgraded to 6.2-Prerelease.  All drivers required by the handbook for this
> application are still in the kernel:
> 
> device scbus
> device da
> device pass
> device uhci
> device ohci
> device usb
> device umass
> device ehci
> 
> However, it will not even finish booting with the USB drive plugged in.
> It gets hung up on "Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle".  If I
> unplug the drive, it immediately finishes booting ok.  If I then plug it
> back in, I get this:
> 
> Nov 21 12:17:23 amanda kernel: umass0: VIA Technologies Inc. USB 2.0 IDE
> Bridge, rev 2.00/0.03, addr 2
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: da0: <Hitachi HDT725032VLA V54O> Fixed
> Direct Access SCSI-2 device
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: da0: 305245MB (625142448 512 byte sectors:
> 255H 63S/T 38913C)
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: umass0: Invalid CSW: tag 9 should be 10
> Nov 21 12:19:33 amanda kernel: (da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Synchronize cache
> failed, status == 0x10, scsi status == 0x0
> 
> Nov 21 12:24:58 amanda kernel: Opened disk da0 -> 5
> 
> If I try to then run sysinstall to run fdisk, it will not allow the fdisk
> configuration to be written to it.
> 
> TIA for any advice, ideas, fixes, etc.
> 

In all likelyhood FreeBSD needs some quirk to work with the IDE bridge
chipset in your enclosure. I have noticed that the plain jane enclosures
seem to work fine but the ones with special features fail. In particular
I have an enclosure with both a disk and an SD media slot purchased from
and branded by Compusa that does not work with FreeBSD. I have also
noticed that the enclosures with a one touch backup button aren't
supported. I unfortunately do not know how to debug these enclosures.

They tend to be so cheap that I just home in on the ones that are
supported. I've noticed that the local Best Buy is carrying an Adaptec
enclosure. I have two of the 2.5" ones and they seem to work fine.
Here's a link to the 3.5" version which I assume uses that same chipset
as the 2.5" one:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/vzsha
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=6991605&st=adaptec&type=product&id=1099392683637
      
-- Chris