Good DAS enclosure

Hardware Hub
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Looking for good inputs for a DAS enclosure.

I’ve hit Amazon and eBay and am surprised at the following:

  • Price. Even for non hardware RAID versions they are not much less than an entry level Synology NAS

  • eBay surprisingly has less pickings than Amazon

I have the following on my list for Amazon (in order of most to least cost):

First listing does have hardware raid options. But I’m meh on that, I really just want jbod. For RAID i’ve become a software RAID snob.

second and third scare me from the reviews perspective.

Blows me away I can get a two disk synology that supports their IP camera security add-on for less than the first listing:

Tempted to go that route with two huge drives to server as a backup to my FreeNAS, but heck it can replace my NVR and provide other services too. But then this is getting ahead of myself.

The whole point of JBOD and trying to be as cheap as possible (DAS) is that my 5TB external for my RasPi acting as an rsync server for my FreeNAS pool is too small. I have an assortment of old 3.5" drives and the most economical route to an already working solution (already have rsync setup push/pull) is just add jbod to the Pi.

Am I looking in the wrong place, are there decent DAS in NewEgg or other sites I’m failing to find?

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Is it worth spending $200 on DAS?

Imho NO. $300 you can already look for an HP microserver or similar case from Supermicro. Assembling a PC would be probably the most optimal in terms of prices. Although a solution based on Odroid HC2 is also an option.

For multi-disk solutions, the easiest and cheaper would be some ultra cheap small used PC.
PI as such a disk concentrator in the role of NAS … hmm personally I would change PI to some Odroid XU4 / HC2.

Which PI do you have? If below 4 then USB2.0 very slowly.
The cheapest, if you necessarily want to use PI is either a very cheap DAS box or separate enclosures and drives connected via usb hub. But with usb drives this is a whole encyclopedia of problems …

If price did not play a role and you like challenges then Odroid HC2 + GlusterFs

Unfortunately, for a large amount of HC2, the price of the project goes up tremendously. And a limit of up to 1Gb/s. But there is a lot of freedom in extension and configuration.

Maybe it’s worth investing more and avoiding the PI + USB hdds solution, which may be cheap but can also cause a whole bunch of problems.

Not mine

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I just stuffed an Orico 4 bay USB3 enclosure with older Seagate 3TB NAS drives and now that thing is running raidz on my classic mac pro. But yeah, I was surprised about pricing as well. I just didn’t want to deal with standalone NAS devices again. I had one of those Synology boxes with suicidal Atom chips.

I have another 5 bay version of the same enclosure on the way which I will populate with 16TB Seagate Exos drives for a “media DAS”. (It’s all stuff I also have on discs, no worries. :wink: )

I’ll try to remember to let you know how it went. Tag me in a week or two if I don’t.

orico

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I’m not sure what your goal is but I have a ds216j and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you get one if you think you can use it.

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Its become murky because pricing has been very surprising.

The goal WAS to use as much stuff I had lying around already, so lets consider that free (its not, but its already paid for) to be used as a backup for the data on my FreeNAS- @freqlabs has given me awesome guidance on making a backup of my boot and I know its easy to import pools into fresh builds but I guess I’m being extra extra thorough by also having data off the FreeNAS rig as well. I have a few 2TB HDDs, a 5TB external, a number of 2.5" misc sized HDDs and @TimHolus a Pi 3 (non B).

I currently have the 5TB USB drive formatted to ext4, plugged into the Pi running raspien lite, mounted and entered in fstab. I’m using rsync, the Pi as the Pull/server and FreeNAS task rysnc over SSH client/push with SSH keys. So the Pi is not a NAS, just an rsync server.

And yeah… its sloooooow but I’m ok with that, its a backup solution to run in the background out of site, somewhat out of mind (need to automate some way of indicated faults/failures). I don’t even ssh in to kick it off, its cron is setup via GUI on FreeNAS. I’m even geeked that I can put this little setup in my safe (have a small wires access hole in the back of it).

The 5TB is just big enough right now to backup my pool, but will not last as more data is added.

The pricing for these ‘dumb’ DAS enclosures had me looking at Synology. I’m partial to Synology having seen how easy they make everything and maybe more-so for their surveillance station solution. I would love to toss my reolink NVR.

FreeNAS has a zoneminder plugin, but last time I played with zoneminder IMO its for those that like to tinker, that need to put in a lot of work to get the end result. I like that for a lot of things (hence enjoying this forum)- like the AntMedia project @TimHolus helped hugely, but for my IP cameras it would be nice to have a reliable easy setup vs. a project car that rarely gets out of the garage working.

So yeah- intent was storage that was super cheap- file format, RAID, speed were not requirements.

I’m so surprised at the pricing for these chassis. A used desktop case with powersupply is probably cheaper

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If you have the 5.25 bays you could go hot swap 5.25 to 3.5 with an IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode. Its cheaper assuming you have the room in the case.

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I have one of those in my z800 I can pull out and put into another rig, would still need a power supply and some compute. I even have an old hardware RAID card here (with good battery).

I really thought I had a silver bullet here- already have the Pi, rysnc setup, various HDDs laying around.

But to my surprise DAS is not cheap. I really expected them to be $40-50.

With that third link being $99, I might just bite. That would be the only $$ spend on this, the drives and compute is already here and setup.

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My first pfsense box had this issue. I think synology refunded a lot of people right? Or at least some kind of hardship payout.

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its a non issue anymore and I’m fairly certain the DS220j is ARM based anyway.

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It’s a dirty secret – Well OK, not much of a secret – that all you’re buying with a brand name NAS is the enclosure.

Really, what do you get with most of the low end brand name NAS boxes? Some low-end CPU and a bit of RAM that you could buy yourself for $200 or less.

So yeah you’re mostly paying for the fancy box with removable drive trays and active / failure LEDs.

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Is 5TB 2.5 or 3.5?
If you have more 2.5 drives, maybe a few Odroid HC1. And possibly the largest 2.5 you have and the rest of the usb 2.0 hub …

If you buy this Synology you are limited to 2 hdd anyway so … yes from the side of nice and simple software this is another shelf of customer care. Something for something.

If you are able to limit yourself to 2.5 then maybe Odroid HC1, I personally use it at home.

Build a case for these disks yourself. And connect them with SATA-USB to SBC or directly SATA to some PC.
Buy two of this kind
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Monland-Three-Disc-3-5-Inch-Computer-Expansion-Silver-black/dp/B086JXBFLM

And one per hdd of it
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Diyeeni-adapter-Supports-2-5inch-3-5inch-UK/dp/B07Y4MBSK4

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@zlynx totally agree. I’m noob and not 1337 but my opinion thus far is there are mostly two options: Go FreeNAS or go Synology. One extreme or the other that is dependent on use-case and end user traits. Most everything else is in the mediocre middle IMO.

Honorable mention to unRAID though, I like its flexibility.

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@TimHolus with another save again. Those little SATA adapters will probably be my cheapest best route. A few of those into the rest of the Pi’s USBs, mount, fstab, partition together. A non-redundant mess of a jbod but what I was looking for- putting my random assortment of disks together as a band-aid low budget afterthought of a backup for my data. Its going to look terrible lol but for under $40 should give me something vs. nothing.

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I really dislike freenas for a few reasons… but its not a bad way to go. Id recommend rolling your own setup over it though.

If you want ZFS, proxmox is a better option IMO

I run unraid at home and back up to proxmox. I’ve done synology… I’ve done freenas. Its hard not to recommend unraid unless you’re going for some crazy speeds or something. Even then its doable.

If you have the box and money to spare, its hard to argue against unraid here.

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So you run proxmox more as a NAS than a hypervisor? unRAID for your primary storage and services?

I’ve pulled some hair out with FreeNAS for sure. I went FreeNAS mostly due to the free part, but I’ve been sticking with it as I feel its teaching me a lot about under-the-hood stuff.

I think its great for someone who works tech and has been wanting to become a storage admin. Messing around with permissions, RBACs, integrations, logs, CLI when the webui doesn’t do it etc. I think its good practice for what its like to use something like NetApp (from my limited experience) or other solutions that have their origins with ZFS as well like Solaris (I’m not saying NetApp is ZFS, but WAFL seems pretty close). It forces you to RTFM which is good— but stressful when you just want to get something up and working.

FreeNAS forums are a little too Linux neck-beard’ish for me though. They are tired of noob’ish questions and it shows. In their defense lots of answers already out there on google, one should do their due-diligence in searching before posting a question. But even after doing so, don’t expect a nice experience there.

When googling FreeNAS plugin questions, or heck even docker container stuff I’ve stumbled onto the unRAID forum and its a breath of fresh air- seems very helpful and collaborative there.

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unraid is my hypervisor and nas

proxmox is my backup target

I dont like freenas because it breaks more often than it should for something based on what it is.

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Welp, I think I just came up on a trade- I had another 5Tb external (oh yeah @TimHolus my 5TB is 3.5 and external- its the seagate external) I totally forgot about. I can switch that out with a 500gb usb drive I have.

Plan is to format the 5TB, mount it to the pi, install and use mhddfs:

No money spent. Read LVM isn’t really good with a Pi anyhow (is it resource issues?) so surprisingly two birds one stone, can mount these two drives to the rysnc path and if one drive dies you do not loose the data on the other drive.

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Let’s go back to the beginning… We’re not creating a new NAS. Only backup for the main NAS. So there is no point in overdoing the solution.
I usually recommend the right amount of Odroid HC2 with 12TB or more to customers. And physical dispersion at different locations to create a 3-2-1 rule.

But since it is supposed to be the cheapest and possible use of PI3… Personally, I am not a fan of solutions based on a large number of disks connected via USB. There are a lot of potential problems that often occur if you are not lucky.

If you decide on PI3 and hdd’s via usb, think about the connection diagram. PI3 will not rather give you adequate power via usb for several 2.5 drives. So either you will use an active usb hub or a SATA-USB adapter with a dedicated PSU. Of course, SATA-USB adapters without a PSU will be a little cheaper but. As for 3.5, of course, they must have their own dedicated power supply.

usb
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ac
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There are also other ways to solve this situation. But they require some investment.

Various SATA HAT or dedicated NAS solutions like

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The seagates come with external power supply. I also have a powerd USB hub if need be.

Pic of my ghetto setup- next to a legit working steam piston model my grandfather made. Old and new small tech.

IMG_20200424_142004
IMG_20200424_1420042176×4608 1.63 MB

Outside of that I don’t want to put any more money into this. Finally have mhddfs setup across the two 5TB drives and rsync chugging away.

Then captain hindsight comes along- I also have 2 PCI USB cards (as I found USB pass-through of native USB ports dodgy) and realized I could have spun up a Cent box on xcp-ng, pass through the USB card AND one of the 10G ports and mount the external drives to Cent. Would rip through a backup much faster.

But when (if ever) this backup finishes, I put the necessary mount lines including the mhddfs one in fstab- verified with a reboot so that when done, I’ll likely move the setup into my safe cause why not- its small, doesn’t put off much heat (and heat is welcome as a de-humidifier) and I don’t have a project for a pi outside of this.

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So go after the smallest resistance line … If you absolutely want to use PI3 and these 2.5 disks then buy the cheapest converters and power the disks from the active hub. And it’s ready.
You will have what you want PI3 + HDD’s
IMG_20161009_102731-e1476042968394

PI
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