USB Drive as 2nd Parity

[Sap1ent]

Hi all,

 

I couldn't find any recent threads on this, but wondered if anyone had any experience of running a USB drive as parity?

 

The situation I have is that I have 10 disks currently in the machine using all of the available sata ports, but i recently had two drives fail within a week, meaning I lost a fair bit of data. I'd like to add a second parity to avoid this situation again, but the only option I have is to add this via a USB to Sata converter. It would be USB 3, so relatively quick, but any forseeable problems?

Many thanks for any responses.

[Squid]

USB attached devices while supported aren't recommended.  Primarily due to the terrible nature of USB and it's tendency (on all platforms) to disconnect / reconnect for no apparent reason.

4 minutes ago, Sap1ent said:

i recently had two drives fail within a week

TBH, most drive "failures" are connection issues (ie: reseat the cabling) vs actual drive failures.

[Sap1ent]

Thank you, almost as soon as i'd posted I found a similar thread and realised it was probably unwise.

Re: the drive failures, agreed, but I changed both cables etc, but these were the same batch and were 'clicking' for want of a better word, so think they'd had it, they were pretty old.

[JonathanM]

19 minutes ago, Sap1ent said:

were 'clicking' for want of a better word,

Clicking can also be a sign of a lack of enough power. I've seen many instances of a drive needing more spin up current than the wiring can support without voltage sag due to high resistance from splitters, or simply just a marginal PSU. Replacing the drive with a newer model tends to "solve" the issue because newer circuits need less current.

 

I'm not saying your drives are good or bad, but it wouldn't hurt to put them in a different computer and run the manufacturers diagnostic on them.

[Sap1ent]

Thanks for the info - had never considered that. Will give them a run and a full test in another machine before I dump them