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Thought this might be helpful as a lot of these mini PCs are hitting the used market.
Anyone have experience with external HDD enclosures? I currently have two 3.5" HDDs, and I’d like room for two or three more. Reliability is pretty important to me, so something that’ll cut out periodically isn’t going to work.
Makes sense for single drives, but if I go with USB, it’ll be something like this with multiple bays, which will almost certainly support UASP. I also don’t want a hardware RAID controller because I’d much rather my BTRFS filesystem handle the individual drives than rely on some controller to not corrupt my data.
The problem, however, is that a lot of these enclosures use really crappy components. Sometimes drives will drop off for no reason and the entire unit will need to be power cycled. They also tend to require a separate power supply, which is also annoying. But if there’s a super high quality one for pretty cheap, the entire package (mini PC + enclosure) is probably smaller than pretty much any equivalent case. So I’m interested, I just haven’t found a good fit.
I’m in the same situation as you, more or less… I have three new 22TB drives that need an enclosure, preferably for JBOD (no hardware RAID needed) but I can’t figure out which ones are actually good products… I don’t mind using a random-brand product if it’s actually solid.
I find it very difficult to figure out which ones will support my 22TB drives. And for some of them, it seems, it’s impossible to add new drives to empty slots later (because of hardware RAID, I guess?), which has made me hesitant in buying one with more slots than I have drives, in case they can’t be utilized later on anyway…
I was looking at the QNAP TR-004 which was mentioned by someone else somewhere on Lemmy some months ago, but IIRC it would be impossible to use the fourth slot later if the drive isn’t included in the hardware RAID configuration…
EDIT: I have also been looking into so-called “backplanes” as an alternative, since they seem to do the job and are cheaper, but I’m unsure if I’ll need a PC chassis/case/tower for that to actually work?
If you find something good (products or relevant info), feel free to share it with me.
Yeah, I don’t understand why JBOD with a decent chipset is so hard to find. I really don’t expect much from it, I just want to slide some drives in and have everything run consistently for a few months at a time. I’ll power cycle periodically to apply updates, so I’m not looking for 24/7/365 operation or anything.
FWIW, Level1Techs seems to recommend MediaSonic (timestamp is where he talks about reliability), but doesn’t give it a ringing endorsement. And that was one of the better ones he’s seen…
After a bunch of research, what I’ve found is:
okay chipset, but garbage build quality (no dampening for drives, no hot-swap, etc)
fancy controller that doesn’t support JBOD - non-starter for me, I don’t want anything to do with hw controllers
expensive - at a certain point, I’ll just keep my oversized ATX case that does the job
Now I’m looking for compact cases that support 5 drives, like this one (a little too cheap perhaps?) or this one. It just seems reliable 4-5 bay USB-C enclosures just aren’t that popular.
Well, if you have your preference, go with it. The base thing is to stick with a company with a solid reputation that was a warranty and isn’t disappearing overnight.
Anyone have experience with external HDD enclosures? I currently have two 3.5" HDDs, and I’d like room for two or three more. Reliability is pretty important to me, so something that’ll cut out periodically isn’t going to work.
For usb, make sure to get one with UASP https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/uasp-makes-raspberry-pi-4-disk-io-50-faster
Makes sense for single drives, but if I go with USB, it’ll be something like this with multiple bays, which will almost certainly support UASP. I also don’t want a hardware RAID controller because I’d much rather my BTRFS filesystem handle the individual drives than rely on some controller to not corrupt my data.
The problem, however, is that a lot of these enclosures use really crappy components. Sometimes drives will drop off for no reason and the entire unit will need to be power cycled. They also tend to require a separate power supply, which is also annoying. But if there’s a super high quality one for pretty cheap, the entire package (mini PC + enclosure) is probably smaller than pretty much any equivalent case. So I’m interested, I just haven’t found a good fit.
I’m in the same situation as you, more or less… I have three new 22TB drives that need an enclosure, preferably for JBOD (no hardware RAID needed) but I can’t figure out which ones are actually good products… I don’t mind using a random-brand product if it’s actually solid.
I find it very difficult to figure out which ones will support my 22TB drives. And for some of them, it seems, it’s impossible to add new drives to empty slots later (because of hardware RAID, I guess?), which has made me hesitant in buying one with more slots than I have drives, in case they can’t be utilized later on anyway…
I was looking at the QNAP TR-004 which was mentioned by someone else somewhere on Lemmy some months ago, but IIRC it would be impossible to use the fourth slot later if the drive isn’t included in the hardware RAID configuration…
EDIT: I have also been looking into so-called “backplanes” as an alternative, since they seem to do the job and are cheaper, but I’m unsure if I’ll need a PC chassis/case/tower for that to actually work?
If you find something good (products or relevant info), feel free to share it with me.
Yeah, I don’t understand why JBOD with a decent chipset is so hard to find. I really don’t expect much from it, I just want to slide some drives in and have everything run consistently for a few months at a time. I’ll power cycle periodically to apply updates, so I’m not looking for 24/7/365 operation or anything.
FWIW, Level1Techs seems to recommend MediaSonic (timestamp is where he talks about reliability), but doesn’t give it a ringing endorsement. And that was one of the better ones he’s seen…
After a bunch of research, what I’ve found is:
Now I’m looking for compact cases that support 5 drives, like this one (a little too cheap perhaps?) or this one. It just seems reliable 4-5 bay USB-C enclosures just aren’t that popular.
Just go with a well known brand with a warranty.
The thing is, I don’t know what “well known brands” are in that space. It’s not something I buy frequently.
Then just go with the warranty. Good brands are obviously well known: Cooler Master, Corsair, TerraMaster, Orico, ASUS…etc.
I honestly have never used either of these, yet they show up at a lot of retailers.
ASUS is a bit sketchy these days IMO, so I try to avoid them.
Well, if you have your preference, go with it. The base thing is to stick with a company with a solid reputation that was a warranty and isn’t disappearing overnight.