External SATA JBOD

[Michael Fuckner]

Hi,

I am thinking about adding an external Case with 4 haddrives to my 
server that should not be running 247. In ancient times this was done 
via SCSI and simply worked (turn on, rescan SCSI, mount).

I already have an external drive connected via USB, but I am not able to 
read SMART using this link.
x22# smartctl -a /dev/da0
smartctl version 5.37 [amd64-portbld-freebsd7.0] Copyright (C) 2002-6 
Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

Device: IC25N040 ATCS04-0         Version: CA4O
(pass1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): MODE SENSE(06). CDB: 1a 0 1c 0 40 0
(pass1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
(pass1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI Status: Check Condition
(pass1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): ILLEGAL REQUEST asc:24,0
(pass1:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Invalid field in CDB: Command byte 2 is invalid
Device type: disk

Can this be done with esata and a port multiplier in the box like this one:
http://raidsonic.de/de/pages/products/external_cases.php?we_objectID=4239

I want to use software Raid via ZFS, so this should be a dumb chassis.
Is anyone using a simliar configuration succesfully? Are port 
multipliers supported by FreeBSD? Do I need any special Sata-controller? 
Can I read SMART information?

Regards,
 Michael!