Hi Fam,
Keeping an eye out for sales this holiday. Particularly this DAS. Paring with a minis forum MS-01 that will serve up media and Nextcloud backups.
The description says “no raid”. I’m assuming that only includes hardware support?
I.E can I just slap a raid 5 using mdadm without the box supporting it?
I use Ubuntu Mate, whichever the most recent LTS is now and when they release.
Thank you for the advice.
WWED
Yeah it just means that it presents the disks as individual disks, you can do with them whatever you like just like any other block device.
Your mileage may vary with how well RAID will work over USB, I’ve tried it on some older USB stuff and the performance and reliability was bad. It’s probably better on newer stuff but I’d test it before loading it up with any important data.
^^^^
Let’s highlight that again!
Wendell even mentioned that in one of his videos only to claim that this one usb-connected device he was reviewing at the time was reliable.
Yes.
Meaning this one passed the test as adequate?
I’ll have to find that video, having trouble.
I’ve historically had issues hosting jellyfin on network drives/mounts it’s just a hassle I want to avoid in it’s entirety, even if it’s gotten easier.
How would Ubuntu recognize a direct rj45 connection if I went the NAS route
Hey @wendell , sorry for the elementary question here but you have direct experience on USB DAS. Can you share two sentences for a pleb on the stability/ safety concerns
modern chipsets have been pretty stable in my experience. I have a media server I helped setup for a friend using the USB das I did a video on. asustor also has a nice USB 10g das. if you don’t scale past about 4 drives and use a fs that gives early warning of corruption it’s fine.
consider the sus sats controllers like j micron which when they overheat cause dats corruption. good USB isn’t any worse than the worst sata controllers
Thank you good sir! Have a happy thanksgiving.
Sounds like a firm endorsement…
Definitely the sort of confidence I’m looking for when plugging US$ 1600 of drives into the thing. 
If the 10 Gb DAS mentioned’s the Xpanstor 4 (AS5004U) I have thermal questions as my experience with less restricted Asustor chassis leaves something to be desired. It is probably one of the least bad 10 Gb four bays but that’s not saying much.
FWIW, I use the D6-320 as a backup pool in TrueNAS CE.
Has worked fine so far with snapshot replication and scrub.
Typical flow for the DAS is turn on → import pool → backup → export pool → turn off.
No idea how it will behave as a regular data pool.
I love used Toshiba drives. I’m that annoying type of fanboy on those for whoever would listen. Luckily ‘only’ ~$1200 
.