this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Opinions about using a mini PC with a HDD enclosure as NAS (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago by PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I was thinking on buying a 2-4 bay HDD powered enclosure as a NAS for my mini pc, since I already have that, and buying or building a full-fledged diy NAS seems a bit expensive.

I want to hear some opinions from you guys, since it seems using this method is a mixed area from the selfhosted pros. I would be hoping that by using a powered enclosure, that would alleviate or solve the USB port overcharging issue, which have appeared in my mini pc when trying out an external HDD with a normal sata to usb converter.

Did you have any experiences with a setup like this one?

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[–] Shimitar@feddit.it 2 points 7 months ago

I used USB enclosures for my RAIDs for over 20 years. The turning point has been usb3 and then usb-c even better, but I found really no difference as in the bottleneck where the mechanical drives.

Moved to an all internal sata setup a few months back because I upgraded the space and moved to a desktop form factor.

Can still recommend the USB approach tough.

BUY A QUALITY EBCLOSURE.

I always used Linux software raid, but purchased a 4 slots USB raid/jbod enclosure to keep the number of used USB ports down.

I never ever had issues with the setup, but I purchased a known-brand enclosure, one with also e-SATA, which unfortunately was/is more a fad than even been really used.

[–] ftbd@feddit.org 2 points 7 months ago

There are small SATA backplanes that allow you to fit 3 HDDs into two 5.25" slots (or 4 HDDs in 3 slots). You can find used ones for cheap (mine was 30€), and with some cheap tower case you could get something NAS-like with hot-swap drive bays for way cheaper

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yes, and you might want to ask in the datahoarders community.

While I dont use a mini-pc, I have a server with 48TB in it on spinning disks, and I've built a hybrid DAS/NAS that I back up to.

I use this 4-bay DAS: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B078YQHWYW I chose it because it supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 and I've been pretty happy with it.

It's usually plugged into my server directly, and I use ZFS to snapshot and send to it. However, I also can plug it into a Pi5 and use ZFS send over SSH to treat it like a NAS. The Pi can of course run Samba/CIFS and SSH for sshfs.

The biggest downside to this structure is probably the metadata speeds for ZFS over USB (looking up snapshot names), but you could always use a cache drive with ZFS.

I highly, highly recommend ZFS and figuring out your software requirements before picking hardware.

Happy to answer any specific questions, too.

[–] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Reviews on that page are kind of dodgy, but they are for all 3 products listed which makes it difficult to tell which review is for what.

Have you had any of the listed issues? Heat, unrecognized success, etc?

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 points 7 months ago

To follow up on this, I just used it in a 72F room, and the drives hit 60C. So heat is an issue, I've just never run into it before.

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[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Have you had data loss occurences in these bay enclosures? Some other commenters have said, that using it as a primary storage is really risky because some crappy controllers could ruin the drives's data for example.

[–] Shimitar@feddit.it 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yes there is someone talking everybody down about USB enclosures*.

Maybe he got burned or something...

Can say never had an issue and I replaced many motherboards over 20 years, and also many enclosures.

Don't go too cheap, but don't worry too much. I highly recommend a raid setup anyway. And always do backups, bit this is unrelated to USB specifically

  • not referring to op or the other comment specifically, just noticed in general somebody always negative about USB on all posts lime this.
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