4 ms·

Can you elaborate? What’s the economic way to do this?

inhumantsar 2y ago
Used PCIe HBA cards pulled from retired servers can be found on eBay for ~$50. They have external facing ports and/or internal facing ports. External is the way to go if you're using a small form factor PC like a business class Lenovo. These are almost all low profile cards, so they will fit in any SFF PC with a PCIe slot. There are special cables which will connect one port on the card to four SATA- or SAS-based disks. The PC's PSU will need SATA power on its cables or else you'll need to scavenge a separate PSU and use the paper clip trick (or better yet, a purpose built connector) to get it to power things on without a motherboard connected. Once you have all of that, then it's just a matter of housing the disks. People have done this with everything from threaded rod and plastidip to 3D printed disk racks to used enterprise JBOD enclosures (Just a Bunch Of Disks, no joke). Total cost for this setup, excluding the disks, can easily be done for less than $200 if you're patient and look for local deals, like a Craiglist post for a bunch of old server hardware that says "free, just come haul it away". Check or r/DataHoarder on reddit or ServeTheHome's blog
- account42 2y ago
  A NUC won't have PCIe expansion slots. You are pretty much stuck with the external ports that come with it.
  - edmundsauto 2y ago
    It looks like some NUCs have M.2 adapter slots that allow PCIe. Seems possible to do with a NUC, you probably can't put 20 drives with it, but 12-16 extra drives sounds feasible. https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/ibchlz/nuc_m2_sata_hba_lots_of_drives/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/ibchlz/nuc_m2_sat...
gosub100 2y ago
they make external HDD chassis that connect via USB. I don't have any experience with them so I can't comment on their reliability, but search for "ORICO 5 Bay USB to SATA Hard Drive Enclosure".
- freddie_mercury 2y ago
  FWIW, I wouldn't recommend Orico. I don't live in the US so my options are somewhat limited but I found a local retailer that carries Orico. I've had five of them in the past five years and four died within 12-18 months. If it was just one, I'd put it down to random bad luck. But with that many failures I assume they are doing something stupid/cheap. Usually they would simply fail to power on but sometimes individual slots seemed to die (which RAID just loooooves). And having an entire enclosure fail and waiting days/weeks for a replacement sucks as you lose access to all your data. I eventually bought a Jonsbo N3 off of Aliexpress and PCI SATA card (to support more than the 2-4 drives most motherboards support) and that has been working well for months.
  - gosub100 2y ago
    I've never tried Orico, that was just the first brand that came up when I searched. I suspect these things are fundamentally unreliable, especially because they are powered by external AC adaptors, meaning there is no real ground between the two switching power sources (one in your PC, the other in the HDD caddy). It's either due to that, or due to the very sensitive signaling along the line, that eventually you get USB disconnects (if you try to run it as an appliance) that wreaks havoc on filesystems, particularly RAID. The Jonsbo N3 is not comparable. I own one as well (how quiet is yours? I upgraded the rear fan but my CPU fan is noisy), but it's a complete PC case, not an external HDD array.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Highpoint has some decent-ish toaster-style drive docks. I have an a couple of the older model with dual drives dual usb-a ports - 5422A - but the Highpoint RocketStor 3112D seems available for $70 with a single 10Gbit usb-c port and dual drives. There is one deeply troubling flaw to them though, they don't turn back on of the power goes out, until you physically hit the button again. I think this is alas all to common for many of these enclosures!

Used PCIe HBA cards pulled from retired servers can be found on eBay for ~$50. They have external facing ports and/or internal facing ports. External is the way to go if you're using a small form factor PC like a business class Lenovo. These are almost all low profile cards, so they will fit in any SFF PC with a PCIe slot. There are special cables which will connect one port on the card to four SATA- or SAS-based disks. The PC's PSU will need SATA power on its cables or else you'll need to scavenge a separate PSU and use the paper clip trick (or better yet, a purpose built connector) to get it to power things on without a motherboard connected. Once you have all of that, then it's just a matter of housing the disks. People have done this with everything from threaded rod and plastidip to 3D printed disk racks to used enterprise JBOD enclosures (Just a Bunch Of Disks, no joke). Total cost for this setup, excluding the disks, can easily be done for less than $200 if you're patient and look for local deals, like a Craiglist post for a bunch of old server hardware that says "free, just come haul it away". Check or r/DataHoarder on reddit or ServeTheHome's blog

account42 2y ago
A NUC won't have PCIe expansion slots. You are pretty much stuck with the external ports that come with it.
- edmundsauto 2y ago
  It looks like some NUCs have M.2 adapter slots that allow PCIe. Seems possible to do with a NUC, you probably can't put 20 drives with it, but 12-16 extra drives sounds feasible. https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/ibchlz/nuc_m2_sata_hba_lots_of_drives/ https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/ibchlz/nuc_m2_sat...

gosub100 2y ago

they make external HDD chassis that connect via USB. I don't have any experience with them so I can't comment on their reliability, but search for "ORICO 5 Bay USB to SATA Hard Drive Enclosure".

freddie_mercury 2y ago
FWIW, I wouldn't recommend Orico. I don't live in the US so my options are somewhat limited but I found a local retailer that carries Orico. I've had five of them in the past five years and four died within 12-18 months. If it was just one, I'd put it down to random bad luck. But with that many failures I assume they are doing something stupid/cheap. Usually they would simply fail to power on but sometimes individual slots seemed to die (which RAID just loooooves). And having an entire enclosure fail and waiting days/weeks for a replacement sucks as you lose access to all your data. I eventually bought a Jonsbo N3 off of Aliexpress and PCI SATA card (to support more than the 2-4 drives most motherboards support) and that has been working well for months.
- gosub100 2y ago
  I've never tried Orico, that was just the first brand that came up when I searched. I suspect these things are fundamentally unreliable, especially because they are powered by external AC adaptors, meaning there is no real ground between the two switching power sources (one in your PC, the other in the HDD caddy). It's either due to that, or due to the very sensitive signaling along the line, that eventually you get USB disconnects (if you try to run it as an appliance) that wreaks havoc on filesystems, particularly RAID. The Jonsbo N3 is not comparable. I own one as well (how quiet is yours? I upgraded the rear fan but my CPU fan is noisy), but it's a complete PC case, not an external HDD array.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Highpoint has some decent-ish toaster-style drive docks. I have an a couple of the older model with dual drives dual usb-a ports - 5422A - but the Highpoint RocketStor 3112D seems available for $70 with a single 10Gbit usb-c port and dual drives. There is one deeply troubling flaw to them though, they don't turn back on of the power goes out, until you physically hit the button again. I think this is alas all to common for many of these enclosures!