So I’ve got an unraid server with 8x 16tb drives, I don’t need to add more yet, but I will eventually and my case is out of drive space, so I’m considering my options for an external enclosure and how to connect it. I will have to get an pcie expansion card, would mini-sas be the better option for an external drive enclosure due to wire length? I honestly dont know the benefits/losses/limits between the two standards. Also does anyone have any good suggestions for an external non-rack mount drive enclosure? money isnt unlimited, so something reasonably priced.
Thanks
If you wanted a pre-baked option that supplies everything you need, STH just did a review of a QNAP DAS unit that comes complete with a PCIe SATA card:
When running external cables I’d definitely try to utilise cables that are designed for external use, as shielding and length etc can definitely become an issue.
I see a lot of people in reviews on other sites complaining about the requirement of their software not being device agnostic.
I’m looking for a more barebones solution, something that simply houses the drives and connects them to the master system as if they were internal.
I see a few usb enclosures like this, but they say (No NAS and Raid function), im wondering if that means the drives cant be put into a raid or the enclosure itself wont raid them, because the latter is preferrable anyway.
I also found this, people complain about the cooling fans, but I can easily replace those with noctuas, this seems to do everything I want, but again, im not sure if usb is ok for running raid. transfer speed isnt really that relevant to me.
The QNAP unit I linked and card are definitely host-system agnostic, as they’ll work just fine in a PC as well as a QNAP NAS Unit - I’ve got one of their expansion cards (2x SATA M.2 + 10GBE) running in my own server at the moment with zero issues too. Can you link one of the reviews you mentioned?
Wouldn’t personally go with USB of any flavour for running a large disk array. You can get external SAS enclosures similar to the QNAP I linked from a variety of sources.
ah, just realized that was for the 16bay model. hate that amazon combines their reviews for multiple products.
Regardless, I would like to go for at least a 8 bay model. do you think the 8bay model will be as agnostic, since the 16 isnt?
It looks like it would be fine yes - it looks like another Asmedia-based card, this one just with 8 SATA rather than 4, so should be plug n play under most OSes.
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